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IVR: making payments easier

atom Technologies launched IVR (Interactive Voice Response) payment services in the market, which enables remote payments over the phone by punching credit card details on any landline/mobile phone key pad, says Malabika Sarkar

Established in October 2005, atom Technologies is a subsidiary of Financial Technologies India Limited. With more than 90 employees, the company focuses on harnessing the digital transaction ecosystem for payments with a special focus on the ever-increasing mobile ecosystem. As a mobile payments service provider, the company, through it’s innovative use of technology in the mobile transactions ecosystem, has created multiple ‘patent pending’ products and services for mobile payments, mobile banking for the un-banked, IVR based payments and mobile-based service distribution framework.

Initially atom launched IVR payments in February 2007, which has provided a hassle free, easy and secure payment options to the end-customers.

Dewang Neralla, Director, atom Technologies said, “We initially started this service with Fame Cinemas and now more then 100 merchants have tied up with us to provide these payments service. Some of them are Futurebazaar, Indiatimes, Tata Sky, Dish TV, Cine-Max, ICICI Lombard, TATA AIG, TVC, Asian Skyshop and many more.”

The company has its presence in five cities across India with Mumbai as its head office. It has also deployed its solutions at some of the customer sites in Dubai. The company’s products and services are spread out to have a complete vertical for payments. It provides products on a service-oriented framework model; hence the work conducted is more of product roll-outs through the service delivery center.

Speaking about the products Narella stated, “As an organization it is very difficult to qualify which is the most significant product. However, our flagship is the atom mobile payments platform. All the other products have been created using the same DNA.” Atom has tied up with more than eight banks and 100 merchants for its products and services. There are more than 6,000 customers who use this platform and transact on a daily basis.

Products and services

atom offers four major services under the brand names, atom—Mobile Payments Platform, atom IVR—IVR based payments solution, atom OTP—secure pass code solutions and atom Sewa—technology enabled financial inclusion solutions.

• atom-Mobile Payments Platform: atom is a fast, secure, inter-operable and a convenient way to make payments using the mobile in sync with current electronic transaction flow. It enables multiple banks as well as merchants on a common platform, allowing the bank’s customers to make payments across the merchant population.

All that the customer requires is a Java MIDP 2.0, a Blackberry or a Windows mobile phone to get atom working. A customer can store and enable upto 16 debit/credit cards on a single application. Through the application on the mobile phone, the customer can make remote payments, utility bill, ticketing and home delivery payments as well as over the counter payments.

All transactions are encrypted and customer PIN protected as an end-to-end process flow ensuring maximum security. atom is more secure than the magnetic stripe, at the same time providing convenience by enabling faster counter payments and remote payments.

atom encompasses the entire merchant population whether these are:

• Existing retailers who accept credit/debit cards at their payment counters
• Merchants offering home delivery services accepting payments in cash or card over the phone
• Web-based merchants
• Utility billers

Merchants can use their existing EDC machines as well as can be provided with a PC-based application or a mobile-based application for initiating the payment requests. These are done without requiring any change in the bank’s infrastructure. Today, as per market estimates, there are more than a million merchants who can easily be brought into the electronic payments system. This gives the banks a unique opportunity to tap into such merchants and at the same time meet the national goal of moving towards a cashless society.

• atom IVR: atom IVR is a simple, secure and reliable payment solution based on IVR technology. It is possible to make payment over the phone without revealing critical credit card data, as the customer care executive does not participate in the process of receiving payment or entering the credit card details while using the IVR system (interaction happens between the system and the customer).

atom IVR enables transactions over the phone be it a movie ticket, airline ticket, leisure tours, day to day shopping, home delivery, car servicing, magazine subscription and many more with real-time validation and authorization, over secure links. atom IVR is integrated with a Risk Management System which is a customizable rule-based fraud detection and prevention engine that identifies and alerts possible suspicious transactions. atom IVR uses advanced Encryption Standards 128 Bit Cipher Block Chaining for routing transactions using secure VPN connectivity.

• atom Sewa-Technology@ Financial Inclusion: atom sewa is a mobile micro-banking platform for banks and MFIs to provide technology enabled financial inclusion services. The platform facilitates true mobility by allowing agents to use their mobile phones as point of transaction devices for true doorstep banking. It supports all features which any traditional service provider provides. At the same time enhancing the value for the institution by supporting multiple products like financial instruments, such as asset/liability/micro-insurance distribution, etc. Another is the multi-access which can support magnetic stripe, contact as well as contactless cards to provide a comprehensive solution covering the entire “unbanked” and “microfinance” spectrum.

atom sewa comes with its banking correspondent and facilitator model to reach out to the end users. It brings the last mile delivery of services through a network of MCX members, NBHC affiliated warehouses and also through its Section 25 company, Grameen Pragati.

Some of the key highlights for atom sewa include:

• Mobile based platform for doorstep banking
• Innovative use of available infrastructure and technologies to provide optimal ROI
• Multi access channel for enrollment and transactions
• Local language support for receipts as well as voice intimation specially targeted at population understanding only local language
• atom OTP: atom OTP is a second factor authentication solution targeted at banks and financial institutions. This provides a strong second factor of authentication and a very cost effective one too. Rather than carrying a bulky hardware token every time one moves out of home, it is very convenient to generate the tokens on a mobile phone. All it requires is a Java MIDP 2.0 enabled mobile phone. This is much safer than the hardware tokens and a security device is always carried in the mobile whenever one moves out.

Employee growth opportunities

atom, as an organization, is primarily focused on providing distribution of payment and banking services through the use of mobile technology. With most of the mobile technology components developed in-house, it has a very strong technology team that works on various technologies across mobile technologies, networking, and device engineering. Along with this, the other two critical business functions are operations, which are managed through a strong team with a very good exposure on risk management and operations practices as well as a sales and marketing team.

Talking about the work atmosphere for employees, growth opportunities and hierarchy structure, Neralla averred, “Work atmosphere is highly motivating where challenges are thrown in and solutions are crafted in the most democratic manner. Creativity is treasured at a premium in the organization. Growth opportunities are myriad and rapidly available to those who show promise.”

So far, the biggest challenge for atom has been acceptance of mobile as a payment mechanism. Mindset to accept this payment mechanism is akin to the stage where access to mobiles was around 10 years back. But now mobile could be seen on each and every customer’s hands. Narella believes that the same will be the case for mobile payments as well. There has been a tremendous amount of market education process that has created awareness. Results of which are expected to be seen in the coming times.

atom has conducted a pilot with Axis Bank in May 2008 for mobile payments. Additionally, they had also launched their product for financial inclusion in June 2008.

The ever curious Indian mindset ensures success to a lot of different and disruptive technologies. Given the ability of the Indian populace to grasp new technology concepts, especially where it involves convenience and a whole lot of cost benefits, a large population is seen adopting the various products and services. Where something like a mobile payment could also impact a whole lot of people who actually make payments or purchase goods or services to something like the financial inclusion solutions, which provides a pure social goal bringing banking and credit services to more than 150 million excluded households—the scale is immense.

malabika.sarkar@expressindia.com