Scheduled commercial bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank has collaborated with PayMate to provide mobile payment solutions to its customers.

The Managing Director of the bank, Mr V.S. Reddy, said that with this partnership, the bank would be joining the league of banks, which have embraced mobile banking.

Using this facility, the customers of the bank would be able to pay utility bills, buy movie tickets, flight tickets, make mobile recharges, and online purchases with over 15,000 merchants registered with PayMate.

The facility will be available across 250 branches of the bank.

Explaining the usage, Ajay Adiseshann, MD & Founder, PayMate, said, "The moment the customer chooses to pay via PayMate at the merchant, he/she would have to share the registered mobile number and the merchant would trigger an IVR call to the customer's mobile. The customer would have to punch his 4 digit mPIN to authorise the payment."

A mobile payment solution links the customer mobile phone with a financial instrument provided by a bank such as a credit card, bank account, or a prepaid account, to enable the user to deploy their mobile phones as a secure payment tool anytime and anywhere.

SBI was the first public sector bank in India to offer mobile banking solution for its customers.

PayMate is the major provider of mobile payment solutions in India. Some of the other names include Obopay, NGPay, cSAM and mChek.

Recently, India's second largest bank, ICICI Bank tied up with mChek, to provide mobile payment services to its debit and credit cardholders. May 28, 2009 Some the major partnerships in space are shown in table below -