DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

mChek has changed a lot more than just the way to make payments. Life is hassle free. Life is easy.

Long, serpentine queues of people waiting their turn in the sun at various counters — telephone offices, railway stations, electricity offices, etc., was until now a part of the quintessential life in India. But not anymore.

John Kattakayam, mChek India Payment Systems Pvt. Ltd

mChek has made people’s lives easier with its online bill payment facility. Started in 2006, it allows its customers to pay phone bills, electricity bills, insurance premiums, book movie tickets, flight tickets, and much more by using their cell phones.

Founded by John Kattakayam, Bharavi Gade, Anurag Gupta and Lokanath Panda with the sole aim to create a common mobile payment platform that could make and receive payments securely and instantly over any distance, mChek has embodied financial inclusion and services for the bottom of the pyramid too in its vision. It works with several banks such as HDFC, ICICI, and Standard Chartered and help them in rural baking.

Talking about how mChek was launched, John Kattakayam, cofounder and president of banking service, operations and regulatory compliance, says, “The idea of mChek was conceptualized as early as 2004 as the next step of the evolution of smart card–based payments into the mobile.” However, it was launched in the market only in 2006 with Dialog in Sri Lanka and Bharti Airtel in India after the idea was productized on the SIM card toolkit (STK).

Launched with just two companies five years back, today it works with a slew of telecom giants in the market such as Aircel, BSNL, Idea, MTNL, MTS, Reliance, RPG, VODAFONE, Virgin Mobile, Tata Indicom, etc., along with various insurance companies, mutual funds, retail chains, movie and travel booking companies, and many more. Undoubtedly, it has established a phenomenal credibility in the market, making itself the best brand with a high recall value in the industry.

Hitherto, it is the only company to be approved by Visa for remote Card Present Transactions, and the first company to be certified by Western Union on its Mobile Money Transfer platform. mChek also works with MPFI, NPCI, and other regulatory/ standards bodies to ensure relevancy in the market and compliance with latest guidelines. It has also maintained its technology leadership in the market by working on multiple POCs with its partners.

The reason behind its immense success is that “it has always believed in working closely with its partners on two specific lines - (1) Identify customer needs and tailor targeted solutions for all customer segments, (2) Identify a win-win business model for all ecosystem partners to ensure they offer mobile as a favorable channel to their own customers,” says the proud owner of the successful venture.