Mobile, Money and Magic

Mobile phones, about 10-15 years ago, were just entering our lives. At that time, they were more of a luxury than a necessity. But still, we started to use them. During college days, mobiles were used more for playing ‘Snake’ and less for talking. A recharge in those days meant going to the neighborhood shop and buying a nicely printed card, often enclosed in a sealed plastic pouch. Postpaid payments weren’t any different: bill consisting of a bunch of color printed sheets would arrive through some courier service, and we would go wait in the queue to pay it!

And then, everything changed.
Mobile phones, now, are almost one among the basic necessities of life. With smart phones, they have become mini computers in our hands. Phones nowadays are capable of doing most of our day-to-day activities and we are depending more and more on them, with every passing day.

When so much has changed, and we have come from an age of paying for mobiles to an age of mobile payments. When you are performing bank transactions, paying for online purchases and getting pizza home delivered – all using the phone, mobile bill payments were never to be left behind.

More and more services are now available, that let us recharge our prepaid accounts (or pay our postpaid bills) using the very same mobile.
FreeCharge, PayTM, MyAirtel are some examples of such services.

What do they do, and how do these services help us? Here are three key points:

• Pay bills whenever, wherever: Yet to sleep, yet to [completely] wake-up, busy or not so much – it doesn’t really matter what you are doing or where you are, when it comes to paying mobile bills. With payment apps, we can recharge our prepaid account or pay the postpaid bill whenever we want, from wherever we are. This provides an excellent advantage over the scenario where we had to walk down to a store and have enough cash ready to pay the shopkeeper. No worries about recharge coupons not being in stock, or recharge not being done due to a multitude of other reasons!
• Avail offers: With loads of competition around, mobile operators come up with new offers on recharges and bill payments every now and then. But if we are paying at the neighborhood store, there is a likelihood of us either not being aware of the offer, or the offer not being available at the store where we are. With mobile app based services, we can rest assured that we will definitely know about the offers – and also be able to avail them!
• Get freebies: Forget about wasting time and money in order to get a prepaid recharge or pay a postpaid bill, these new services actually give us freebies for paying our mobile bills. How nice an idea is it to get a cool discount voucher or a free gift coupon for doing nothing more than the unavoidable ritual of paying a bill!