India’s ICICI Bank has launched a service called “icicibankpay” that allows customers to transfer money using Twitter.
Customers must follow the bank’s Twitter account to register their mobile device and then send @icicibank a direct message with the recipient’s user name and the amount to be transferred.
The recipient does not need to be an ICICI Bank customer.
ICICI Bank, one of India’s four big banks and the second-largest in terms of assets, is the second bank to add pay-by-tweet service. France’s second-largest bank, Groupe BPCE, introduced a similar service last year.
About 185 million of India’s total 213 million Web users accessed services through a mobile Internet connection last year.
The nation has a population of 1.2 billion, of whom about 10 percent — 120 million people — owned a smartphone last year, according to data from research company IDC.
However, the number of people who own smartphones in India is forecast to grow substantially, following the influx of less costly smartphones, such as the Motorola Moto G and models from local vendors, including Micromax.
“This rapid pace of growth in smartphones is expected to continue in India. While we notice that much of the growth is coming from low-cost devices using the Android operating system, Windows is making adequate gains too, based on the strength of the entry-level product mix in smartphones,” IDC India’s Kiran Kumar said.
ICICI Bank executive director Rajiv Sabharwal said that it was the company’s strategy to go where its users are, and that social media sites and mobile devices are critical.
The new financial services are the result of Twitter’s push into e-commerce, as the social network attempts to expand beyond advertising as a potential revenue stream, and aims to make Twitter a core experience in other activities.
Twitter Inc introduced a feature that allowed users to buy goods directly from some promoted tweets, while Amazon Inc introduced a feature that allowed users to add stuff to their online shopping carts for purchase using tweets.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS