Airtel Lanka to launch mobile payment soln

COLOMBO, SRI LANKA: Bharti Airtel Lanka together with Bank of Ceylon and Ceylon’s mobile payment facility, BOC Paymate - an Indian mobile payments company - on Thursday announced the launch of the MCommerce solution to all Airtel subscribers in Sri Lanka.

These services are available to all customers of Airtel, enabling them to make instant payments of phone and utility bills, account balance inquiries, mini statements, fund transfers and also, instant post paid account bill payment and pre paid recharge connections, using their BOC account, the company said in a statement.

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This text based platform offers Airtel and Bank of Ceylon customers the convenience of making utility bill payments for water, electricity and telephone along with account balance inquiries, mini statements and fund transfers through SMS.

Additionally, Airtel recharge facilities as well as postpaid bill-payment facilities are also available to customers over SMS. Bank of Ceylon customers who are already registered with the Airtel network can continue to use their current connection and enjoy the service over their Airtel mobile.

This service does not require any GPRS/EDGE connectivity nor does it require an application download as it is an SMS based service which works on any mobile making this service handset-agnostic.

Dr. Gamini Wickramasinghe, chairman, Bank of Ceylon, said, “With the changing lifestyles ushered in by the mobile phone over the last few years, a significant opportunity to combine banking and mobile services has arisen. The mobile phone is increasingly becoming the one-stop-shop for customers and a simple and secure service like the BOC Paymate Solution offered over Airtel, provides unparalleled convenience to all our customers.”