Mobile payments company Paymate announced (BS) today that they had raised a second round of funding of $9 million. The funding has been led by Mayfield Fund, and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers (KPCB) and Ram Shriram's Sherpalo Ventures have also returned as investors. Coruscant Tec co-founders Ajay Adiseshann and Probir Roy will retain majority stake. There are a couple of things to note here: -- The timing of the announcement: There have been reports that the RBI will release guidelines for mobile payments on the 15th of June, and I'm told that there was a seminar in Mumbai last week focused on the implications of these yet-to-be released guidelines. KPCB and Sherpalo have a history of investing in companies, and announcing the funding the time is right, so it's possible that Paymate received funding a while back, but with all the expected buzz around mobile payments, it's a timely press release. -- Where's Citibank? Paymate had launched initially with Citibank on board, but if you go through their redesigned website, you'll notice that Citibank isn't a partner bank anymore. So while they added ABN Amro last month, and are in talks with SBI (India's largest public sector bank), Paymate appears to have lost their first big banking partner. 11 banking partners are still on board, including Standard Chartered, Canara Bank, Cosmos Bank, HDFC (among India's largest private sector banks), South Indian Bank, etc. Paymate also has operations in Sri Lanka, and a tie-up with Bank of Ceylon. The Burn…
