Reliance General Insurance, a subsidiary of Reliance Capital, has launched a mobile point of sales (mPOS) solution which will allow customers to pay insurance premium using a mobile phone, reports The Times of India. The company aims to eliminate payment-related delays, errors and frauds with the launch of this service.
The company will provide an external card reader dongle that will convert any GPRS enabled touchscreen phone into a POS terminal. The Reliance General Insurance Company (RGIC) agents will carry this mPOS device along with their GPRS enabled devices accept premium collection from the customer. The company has already distributed 1,000 dongles to its agents in the pilot phase. The company will distribute 5,000 dongles to its agents after a successful pilot run in next couple of months. RGIC claims that the move is likely to translate to about 25% increment in sales-force productivity and 20% increase in sales.
The company has not disclosed its technology partner nor has it disclosed the details of the bank it has partnered with to deploy the solution. It’s also not clear whether the user will have to bear the transaction cost for making use of the mPOS facility.
Other developments: This is an interesting implementation of the mPOS technology. Previously we have seen firms launch a mPOS solution for consumers and businesses. This is probably the first time a company has launched an mPOS solution to enhance its own service. Yes Bank had launched a mobile point of sale (mPOS) that allows GPRS enabled mobile phones to be converted into Point of Sale terminals
Sistema Shyam TeleServices Limited that operates voice and data services, under the MTS brand, had launched MTS mPOS, a mobile point of sale device that can be attached to MTS mobiles for point of sales transactions. PayMate, the mobile payments company,had launched a PayPOS mobile application, which also enabled credit and debit cards payments and electronic transactions on mobile phones at the point of sale (POS). However, unlike MTS’ mPOS service, PayMate is an application based payment application and is available on all Android/iOS devices.
Ezetap, a company incubated by AngelPrime, startup incubator founded by Bala Parthasarathy, Shripati Acharya and Sanjay Swamy, had launched a mobile PoS (Point of sale) solution that allows feature phones, smartphones and tablets to be converted into Point of Sale terminals, by adding a compact accessory, the Ezetap Card-Reader.
