I-MADE launches mobile wallet for college students

For college students, making payments for submitting college fee and canteen bills as well as purchasing books is often cumbersome. For those who study in a city away from home, receiving money from parents is an added challenge. For helping students face this challenge, Innovation in Mobile App Development Ecosystem (I-MADE)—an initiative by Telecom Centers of Excellence (TCOE)—has launched I-MADE Wallet, a mobile application which will help students carry out cashless transactions.

Students will be able to use the I-MADE Wallet through their college's official Android & iOS mobile app for daily transactions including paying collage and hostel fee and canteen bills besides ordering food and meeting travel expenses and buying books and other study material.

Using the wallet, students can also receive money from parents. Once students download their college's mobile app and sign in on the wallet, parents can link their account to the wallet and top up it as per requirements. I-MADE is live in 50 colleges and universities in India and has an ambitious plan to reach 35,000 colleges within five years. Students can use the wallet for transactions involving offline and online merchants, including Amazon and Flipkart.

"One of the priorities for I-MADE is to digitise institutions across India and provide better infrastructure to students. Mobile wallet is a step towards achieving this. We hope that the problems faced by students and parents during student life regarding payment of bills and money transfer will be solved by this in a safe and secured manner," R K Pathak, DDG (IC), Department of Telecommunications and director, TCOE India, said in a statement.

Telecom Centres of Excellence (TCOE) was set up in February 2008 under the public private partnership (PPP) mode as a forum for the government, the academicians and the industry players to work together for the growth of the telecom sector.

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