MChek Enables Mobile Payment In Sri Lanka With Dialog And NDB Bank
Sri Lankan private sector bank NDB Bank and telco Dialog Telekom have launched mChek‘s mobile payment solution. The service allows payment of utility bills, pre-paid top-ups, mobile commerce and banking. The solution is embedded on SIM cards, and merchants with mChek enabled SIMs can turn their mobiles into “point of sale terminals and utility bill payment kiosks”. As per the release, Sri Lanka is a largely cash based market, with limited credit and debit card usage. MChek is funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Rajesh Jain.
In India, mChek has tie-ups with ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, Visa and mobile operator Airtel, for utility payments. Airtel has plans to launch its services in Sri Lanka, and Bloomberg has details on the Sri Lankan market here.
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Comments (2)
Nov 28, 2007 10:45 AM
Why not mCheck expand business for ordinary merchants and extend their horizon with other banks in India as well including other moblie service providers.
Nov 10, 2008 3:33 AM
The Mcheck is inherently un secure and not secure as claimed by the company , MNOs do not encrypt the messages END TO END, or to put it otherwise, they transmit it in plain over microwave or IP from BS to Core network.
Further , The A5/3 placeholder is not used most of the time as it needs new handsets as well as SIM. Also the COMP128 algoritham used even in A5/3 can be broken in 8 hours by using a PC. Above all , even if A5/3 is used, Man in the Middle attacks is quite easy to implement to catch the messages.
RBI has mandated “end to end” encryption for payment services and as per this clause , I feel that MCHECK may need to go for the SIM application route to deliver the service!