Beam, a mobile money project, offers a different peg to the business case of mobile money transfer initiatives in emerging countries. It is probably the only organised mobile payment and mobile money transfer system in India which is both carrier and bank agnostic,

Unlike other similar projects, Beam works completely on SMS and does not need installation of any application. Anyone with a simple cellphone that is capable of sending and receiving text messages can use Beam to transfer money.

This is how it works:

User A buys credit by paying a Beam franchisee and receives a text message indicating the account has been topped up.

User A transfers money to User B.

User B makes payments for goods bought at a merchant by sending him a text message.

Or User B refunds the money received by visiting a Beam franchisee.

What we liked the most about the service is the fact that the user does not have to pay any service fee for any of the transactions apart from when he wants to refund the amount (in which case, 5 percent service fee is deducted). Instead, the merchants pay three percent service fee for every transaction.

The company is in its first phase of rolling its services out and is targetting major metros and the Hindi-speaking heartland of Nothern India and parts of Central, Western and Eastern India. They plan to cover the entire country by the end of the current financial year.