12 August 2015.
Visa has announced that it is launching a trial of a mobile payments app in India.
The app, called mVisa, will allow users to make small payments and also transfer money between two Visa accounts.
Around 20,000 merchants and 4 banks have signed up to the pilot scheme, which will launch in the Indian city of Bangalore in September.
Smartphone ownership in India has a growing rapidly. Around 160 million Indians currently own a smartphone, with this figure predicted to grow at a rate of 23% per year until 2017.
With the majority of Indians using their smartphones to access the internet, Visa hopes it will be a small step for them to start doing online payments via their mobile phones too.
