11
tech-tonic
Soon, you’ll kiss
goodbye
oyour wallet
t
Mobile app Momoe lets you view your live tab at restaurants,
split bills and pay on the phone at your convenience
OB Bureau
from merchants for each transaction, which is
equivalent to the mobile point-of-sale terminals
charge.
“The app links a customer’s bank account
or card with their app, and hence the money
moves out the bank account only at the time of
transaction,” says Neelesh.
S
oon, wallets will be a thing of the past.
Parents will tell their children about how
they used to carry money in a pocket-size
leather case to pay the bills at restaurants, shopping malls and grocery stores. And the children will listen to these stories wide-eyed and
wonder in amazement as they live in a world
of e-wallets, enjoying the comforts of cashless payment through
smartphones. A bit dramatic, yes.
But that’s precisely what mobile
payment gateways and virtual
wallets like Paytm and Mobikwik
hope to achieve.
Momoe is the new kid in the
world of virtual money, and it
comes with a power-packed funding of $1.2 million from IDG Ventures India and Jungle Ventures. Now we know
where all the money is going. Or do we?
Momoe is an app that lets you view your live
tab at brick and mortar outlets like restaurants
and grocery stores, split bills and pay on the
phone and checkout at your convenience without having to wait for the bill to arrive at the
table.
The Bangalore-based company was founded by Karthik Vaidyanathan, Ganesh Balakrishnan, Aiman Ashraf, Utkarsh Biradar and
Neelesh Bam, who are mostly graduates of IITs
and IIMs, in 2014.
The app is currently available for iOS and Android. “About 400 merchants in the city (including Bootlegger, Opus, Brewsky, Kitsh Mandi
and Sherlock’s pub) apart from cafes and grocery stores, are in our network. Our user-base
Disruption
Managing director of IDG Ventures India, TC
Meenakshisundaram, believes that Momoe
is disrupting the payments at both merchant
and consumer end by leveraging the power of
smartphones and that it will lead the future of
payments in India.
With Asia accounting for over half of the
world’s mobile devices, this region is alive with
growth potential for Momoe, said Amit Anand,
founding partner at Jungle Ventures.
has crossed 85,000 and things are looking up,”
says Neelesh.
“The app requires the users to save their credit
card details on it. Once that is done, all one has
to do is to give the waiter their phone number
and the bill will appear on the app, which can be
split with friends or checked out,” he adds.
Expansion plans
The company plans to utilize the funding, which
is about Rs.7.4 crore, to acquire one million users and 2,000 merchants using the platform by
the year-end. The company plans to expand to
other metros by the year-end, concludes Neelesh.
So, how is Momoe different?
The challenges
Most prepaid wallets in the market require a
certain amount to be loaded into it, which can
be spent at certain merchants who accept payments from the wallets. There is no recourse for
the user to retrieve the funds stored in wallets if
they are lying dormant. PayTM and Mobikwik
facilitate cashless payments through such virtual wallets. The Momoe app works by using credit-card details, and makes money by taking a cut
The path towards cashless economy is riddled
with riders. RBI’s regulation of two-factor authentication could dampen the user experience
when it comes to cashless transactions. However, the RBI is contemplating to enable single
factor authentication for low value transactions.
And if that happens, the mobile payment space
could witness a revolution and someday physical wallets could indeed be a thing of the past.
5 must-have Android game
Statutory warning:
These games
are addictive
Fast & Furious:
Legacy
1
This is the official mobile
game for the Fast and
Furious franchise and is a sure hit. Join Tej,
Roman, Letty and others to tear up the streets
in super-charged story missions set across all 7
Fast & Furious movies. Lead your Crew against
rival teams and race in classic movie locations
around the globe from Rio to Tokyo and back
to LA. Pick your favourite car model from over
50 models and show your driving chops by
avoiding cops, red light and traffic. This game
will surely keep you playing nonstop.
2
Cartel Kings
Meet Max Muscles, Donnie Dollars
and the rest of the Cartel Kings.
They have really itchy trigger
fingers, terrible dress sense and
love stealing stuff. Guide them as
they blast their way through the city, taking out
the bad guys and blowing stuff up in the hunt
for cash. If you’re feeling lonely, join a Cartel with
friends and compete against enemy Cartels in the
hunt for amazing rewards. Or visit Battle Bay and
attack other players bases to steal their loot and
upgrade your own millionaires mansion - solid
gold toilets don’t buy themselves you know!
3
Carrom Live
From the makers of the
smash hit Teen Patti
comes Carrom Live, a
multiplayer Carrom game. Keep beating opponents to earn XP and Chips. Try hitting some
whacky shots to unlock achievements. Level up
by dominating your opponents or just choose
to enjoy a quick game. You can play different
modes and the gameplay brings real time multiplaying. You can look at the board at different
angles and analyse your shots. You can play with
your Facebook friends as well and you can find
other opponents for an epic battle.
4
4. 2048
2048 is a fun, addictive and a
very simple puzzle game. It is
very popular with people who
love mind simulations and puzzles. The objective of the game is
to reach the magical number 2048 by merging
and mixing tiles of similar numbers. This seems
like an easy feat and initially the game will play
o