The Indian start-up that may sideswipe Apple Pay

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Abhijit Bose, the CEO of Ezetap, shrugs off Apple CEO Tim Cook‘s recent trip to India. He isn’t worried about the American smartphone behemoth moving into his mobile payments business. “I’ve said I’ll pick up any Silicon Valley CEO at the airport and drive him anywhere they want,” said Bose, whose Bangalore-based company (No. 3 CNBC Disruptor 50) is on track to handle $1 billion in transactions this year.

With 900 million mobile phone users and a sophisticated biometric digital ID issued to every citizen, India is increasingly attractive to companies that provide mobile financial services. According to a recent report by GrowthPraxis, a market research firm in Bangalore, the market for mobile-enabled payments in India soared from $90 million in 2012 to $1.4 billion in 2015. Indians opened more than 200 million new bank accounts in the last two years, roughly equal to the number of households in the United States. Now 250 million Indians have access to broadband Internet.

The mobile payments market in India has taken off after years of anticipation as broadband networks, and high-speed 4G cellphone networks have become more commonplace, said Amit Goel, co-founder of GrowthPraxis and managing director of LTP, a financial technology research site.

Source: CNBC (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Technology
Tags
digital payments, financial inclusion, mobile finance