Headquartered in Delhi, Eko is a low-cost payment infrastructure to enable instant small value financial transactions over a mobile phone. Eko leverages existing retail shops, telecom connectivity and banking infrastructure to extend branchless banking services to a common man.

Eko works as a “Business Correspondent” to Banks to provide savings accounts and remittances to the customers via next-door mom-n-pop stores.

Customers walk-in to retail store to open a savings account, securely deposit & withdraw from the account. Cellphone in the hands of customer and the retailer acts as point-of-sale device. The experience for customer is very similar to getting a mobile connection or talk-time recharge.

Performing a transaction only requires numeric literacy for number dialing. No app, no special SIM card, no SMS, hence the service works across all phones i.e. lowest to most sophisticated handsets.

Eko also provides non-financial services such as mobile recharge, DTH recharge, job-listing subscriptions as well as mass disburals for workers with low-ticket salary / incentives.

Problem

More than half of Indian population i.e. 500+ million people remain unbanked or under banked with the presence of 100s of banks in the country. Due to high cost of infrastructure and service, traditional business models have failed to address the needs of low income population who transact in small values but high volumes and often in cash. There is a big demand for a convenient service to provide financial inclusion through savings and remittances as well as a means to create a cashless economy.

Solution

Eko appoints and trains agents who are existing small business owners to help customers transact. The agents pre-fund cash into accounts against which e-money is issued. This way, the agents can only accept as much cash from customers as they have pre-funded into their accounts reducing risk. The agents use number dialling from their phones - using USSD - akin to a missed call. The transaction information is relayed over the communications network to Eko's servers. Eko validates transactions and completes the banking and accounting leg. It also sends instant confirmations to the agent as well as the customer for each transaction. In order to secure the transactions, Eko agents and customers use a patent-filed, low-cost paper based security mechanism. The mechanism mimics an RSA device using paper and helps the user who is debiting his electronic account to authenticate the transaction by generating a unique one-time use password for each transaction.

Example

Eko's business model is as follows: Eko distributes financial services on behalf of banking and non-banking financial service providers. Eko is compensated on: 1) Sourcing Products - such as Bank Accounts, Job Listing Subscriptions - this is usually a one-time fees 2) Completing financial transactions - such as cash-in, cash-out, remittance, recharge, subscription payment. An example of the customer benefit is stated below. Raj is a migrant worker in Delhi. His family lives 500km away in a village in Uttar Pradesh, a neighbouring state. He used to send money home through friends and informal sources. These were not reliable. Raj has an account with State Bank of India in the nearby town from their village. He approached an SBI-Eko outlet, quotes his mobile number, the account number into which he wishes to send money and amount. Eko's agent dials a numberic string with the details. Seconds later, Raj receives a message on his phone asking him to confirm the account. He confirms. The agent dials another string from his phone and within a few seconds the transaction is complete and the money has been transferred. His family can now with draw the cash from the ATM in the neighbouring town.

Marketplace

There are a growing number of competitors who offer similar services, although none of them use the mobile phone entirely as Eko does. Competitors are FINO, A Little World, Oxigen, Suvidha, Beam to name a few. Currently the market is large and untapped. Success will depend on growth and rapid scale to create a wide network presence. Some our competitors are also much better capitalized and may be able to extend reach faster than Eko.