Mumbai, December 14, 2006: PayMateTM, a mobile payment solution which was launched in July this year will now power 'Seijo and the Soul Dish' to offer mobile payments for its customers. Through this partnership, Seijo's will be the first restaurant in India to offer its customers the option of paying via their mobile phones.Through PayMate, Seijo's customers will be able to make payments for their bills via a simple SMS. Once a customer has asked for their bill, they would need to inform the waiter that they would be paying via PayMate and give their mobile number. The waiter in turn would punch this into the computer and the system will send out an SMS to the customer requesting him/her to approve the transaction by replying to the SMS (with PIN provided by the bank at time of registration).Once authorized by the customer PIN, the transaction is approved in real time within seconds and the customer and Seijo's will receive a confirmation message which will serve as the receipt. This process completely rids the customer of the need to carry credit cards or bundles of cash.The popular restaurant and bar located on Bandra's Waterfield Road was recently voted Mumbai's Best Looking Restaurant (Times Food guide) and has also made its way to various international magazines."Seijo's is the first restaurant that we have signed on and we are already integrating with several other merchants across various categories. We believe that mobile payments will be the wave of the future as it offers convenience, ease of use and security. Not having to divulge credit/debit card information or carry bundles of cash, puts a lot of consumers at ease. We will be announcing other partnerships in a phased manner in the weeks to come", said Ajay Adiseshann, Founder & MD, PayMate."This is indeed a unique payment mechanism and we are extremely excited to offer this service to our customers who we are sure will benefit from this option. Mobile payments are the obvious future and believe that we will soon see more and more customers adopting this service. More so, we are glad to be among the first to offer this service and look forward to a long standing partnership with PayMate', says, Kishore DF, Owner, Seijo and the Souldish.PayMate has already partnered with some key online merchant and is in the process of integrating with several others merchants across categories, which will be announced by the company in a phased manner.PayMate User ManualPayMate is currently being offered to Citibank bank credit card and banking customers and will roll out services with other leading banks shortly. To use PayMate, Citibank customers need to sign up for this service free with the bank by simply sending "PayMate" as an SMS to 2484. The customer will then be called back and registered for the service following which they can conveniently pay at any of PayMate's accredited merchants via a single SMS.On receiving this SMS, the bank will verify the user's mobile number with the account and on confirmation will debit the account accordingly. The merchant and the customer will receive a confirmation message from the bank approving the transaction. The entire transaction takes place at the cost of a single premium SMS.PayMate is in the process of tying up with several merchants for online shopping, travel bookings, airline and movie tickets, telco's, utilities, insurance companies, cable and broadband services, tele-shopping etc. The current list of merchants includes Indiatimes, Rediff, Naukri, Cleartrip, Travelmart, Jeevansaathi, Makemytrip, Future Bazaar, 99acres, Onmobile, Telebrands, Worldspace, VSNL etc and is growing by the day.PayMate offers a secure payment solution as no credit/debit card information is ever disclosed during the transaction process. The trust model is based on the recommendations by Ernst & Young; which provides the security measures for both the bank as well as the customer.About PayMate India Pvt. Ltd.PayMate India Private Limited is a mobile commerce solutions company based in Mumbai. PayMate India has been spun off by Coruscant Tec, a mobile content developer and aggregator, to offer comprehensive mobile commerce solutions.PayMate was founded in May 2006 by Ajay Adiseshann, Founder and MD, Coruscant Tec and Co-founder, Probir Roy. In a short span of time PayMate India has partnered with Citibank to offer a unique mobile payment solution - PayMateTM. The company has tied up with major retail partners such as Rediff.com, Naukri.com, Cleartrip.com, Jeevansaathi.com and 99acres.com to provide its users a diverse portfolio of merchants to choose from.PayMate India is funded by Silicon Valley based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures who have helped build some of the world's leading brands and companies like Amazon, Google, Sun Microsystems. For more information log on to www.paymate.co.in
