Cosmos joins hands with PayMate

Pune-based co-operative bank, Cosmos, has joined hands with PayMate to provide mobile payment facility to all its customers. With this, Cosmos now joins the club of Citibank, HDFC and Corporation Bank, which have activated this facility for their customers.

PayMate is currently used by over 1,00,000 customers across the country. The subscribers of this service can pay for their online shopping, buy movie tickets and book airline tickets through an SMS.

"A bank customer's cellphone number is attached to his or her bank account. While making the payment, the customer has to type a Personal Identification Number, an instantly generated code, the payment amount and send an SMS to PayMate. The amount is immediately deducted from the customer's bank account," PayMate managing director Ajay Adiseshann said.

Bank chairman Mukund Abhyankar said the bank wanted to provide the most advanced facilities to its customers.

"We have 79 branches across India and more than 80 per cent of customers have a cellphone. We want more and more people to use this facility," Abhyankar added.

Over 3,000 merchants, at present, support PayMate and the number is expected to grow to 10,000 by the year-end. According to the company, over 2,500 transactions are already happening through PayMate every day.