Businesses Vie for the Mobile Payments Market in India
印度手機匯款市場大家搶
By Richard Shaffer

MUMBAI, India – Chinak Ramtheol earns about $4 a day tending machines that melt plastic trash into pellets for recycling. He regularly can send a few hundred rupees to his family in rural Siddharthnagar, 1,600 kilometers across India near Nepal.
藍托爾管理的機器可將塑膠垃圾融成可回收再利用的顆粒，日薪約四美元。他經常可以匯幾百盧比回去給家人，而他的家遠在1600公里外，靠近尼泊爾邊界的北方邦希達爾斯納加爾區。

“The bank is only open when I am supposed to be working, so I lose an hour’s pay,” Mr. Ramtheol said. He’s intrigued by a new service that will enable him to send the money by cellphone. MoneyOnMobile, an Indian start-up, is latching on to an idea that began six years ago in Kenya of transferring money with a few taps on a cellphone.
藍托爾說：「銀行只在我工作的時間營業。這會讓我少賺一個小時的工錢。」一種使他得以透過手機匯款的新服務引起了他的興趣。印度新創企業MoneyOnMobile仿效六年前在肯亞首次上路的一種新點子：按下手機幾個鍵，便可把錢匯出去。

Kenya’s mobile payment system, M-Pesa, has become so popular that most Kenyans send money, buy food and pay bills via cellphone – wirelessly transferring the equivalent of $21 billion annually.
肯亞的手機付款系統M-Pesa已經普及到多數肯亞人透過手機匯款、買食物及付帳單的程度，每年無線轉帳金額約相當於210億美元。

South Asia is a fertile market for the concept. The region accounts for the largest number of offices actively providing mobile money services, 3.8 million compared with 805,000 in Africa. After four years in operation, Pakistan’s wireless network, Easypaisa, is moving $3.5 billion annually. In Bangladesh, where the bKash wireless payment system has been operating for only two years, the transaction rate is $4 billion annually.
南亞是這種概念的肥沃市場。該地區提供手機匯款服務的營業點大約380萬個，不僅遠高於非洲的80.5萬個，而且舉世最多。巴基斯坦的無線匯款網絡Easypaisa已經上線四年，每年經手的總額也合35億美元。孟加拉的無線付費系統bKash已經經營二年，每年轉手的總額約合40億美元。

According to the Reserve Bank of India, the number of wireless money transfers has more than doubled since September 2012, moving the annualized equivalent of $3.2 billion.
根據印度央行的統計，印度人的手機轉帳次數去年九月至今已經增加一倍多，一年總額約合32億美元。

By 2015, mobile money transfers in India could total $350 billion annually, some analysts estimate. The opportunity has attracted the major banks and mobile network operators but also at least a dozen new companies.
部分分析師認為，至2015年，印度的手機轉帳總額可達3500億美元。如此龐大的商機已經吸引各主要銀行與電信業者，以及至少十數家新公司投入。

The most rapidly growing new venture is MoneyOnMobile. In operation less than three years, it already has attracted four times as many users as Kenya’s M-Pesa (75 million versus 18 million).
成長最快的是MoneyOnMobile。它上線不到三年，吸引的用戶卻已經是肯亞M-Pesa系統的四倍之多（分別是7500萬人與1800萬人）。

The company – controlled by Calpian, a payments processor based in Dallas, Texas – was founded by Shashank Joshi, a 40-year-old engineer. “Payments is a globally neglected industry. Nobody pays attention to it,” he said. “You cannot survive without making payments.”
該公司由德州達拉斯的卡爾皮恩付費處理公司控制，創辦人是年僅40歲的工程師耶希。他說：「支付是在全球都被忽略的產業。沒有人注意它。你不支付就無法生存。」

Mobile payments could improve the lives of India’s 354 million poor – most of whom have cellphones but no bank accounts – by lowering the cost of remittances. Across India, 100 million migrants have moved to the cities. Every year, they send an estimated $12 billion to their villages. Most funds travel in cash via networks of relatives and friends or courier services. Such conduits can be slow, unreliable and expensive. Over wireless networks, money can move instantly and sending costs less than a penny.
印度窮人為數約3.54億，其中大多擁有手機卻沒有銀行帳戶，手機付費可因減少匯款的成本而改善他們的生活。在印度各地，湧向城市的人數已多達一億人，每年匯回老家的款項估計約120億美元。多數匯款以現金方式透過親友或遞送服務轉達。這種方式可能非常緩慢、不可靠且花錢。如果透過無線網絡，匯款可即時送到，費用則不到一美分。

MoneyOnMobile is preparing to offer money transfers. Although there are almost 900 million cellphones in India, a mere 4 percent are smartphones. As a consequence, MoneyOnMobile is trying to achieve scale with the ordinary cellphone.
MoneyOnMobile準備提供匯款服務。印度人擁有將近9億支手機，其中約僅4%是智慧手機。有鑑於此，MoneyOnMobile正設法創造普通手機的數量規模。

The company’s average transaction amounts to less than $1.50, but it processes more than 400,000 transactions daily. The result is annual revenue of $200 million, and the company expects to break even early next year.
該公司收取的轉帳手續費平均每筆不到1.5美元，可是每天處理筆數超過40萬筆，年營收達二億美元。它預期明年初就可打平。

“The key is volume,” Rajesh Mishra, the company’s president, said. “We make almost nothing on each transaction, but millions of them – millions every day – can be a good business.”
該公司總裁米希拉說：「數量是關鍵。我們處理每一筆轉帳幾乎都沒賺錢，然而每天數百萬筆會是門好生意。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/business/international/mobile-payments-gain-traction-among-indias-poor.html

2013-12-31聯合報/G5版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS陳世欽譯 原文參見紐時週報八版下