Sun Microsystems and C-SAM help banks in India usher in new era of mobile banking

The Ready-to-Deploy Mobile banking solution will enable banks to provide convenience, flexibility and security to customers across the country  

Bangalore, March 30, 2009- Sun Microsystems and C-SAM, one of the pioneers in secure mobile phone-based transaction technology, today announced the availability of a secure, state-of-the-art, high performance, comprehensive and field proven Mobile Banking (mbanking) solution at a very attractive price point. The comprehensive mbanking solution from C-SAM preloaded on Sun platforms will ensure low cost of ownership, quick deployment and peace of mind for banks across the country. The ready-to-deploy platform works on any network-GSM or CDMA and is fully compliant with 'Mobile Banking Transactions in India - Operative Guidelines for Banks’ recently issued by RBI.

In India where the number of mobile users exceed 7 times the number of internet users, the joint offering from Sun and C-SAM will open up huge markets for banks who are interested in offering improved services to their customers. The C-SAM mobile banking application running on Sun’s high performance scalable servers (one App tier and One Database tier) will help banks in the country acquire new customers, offer new products and services, reduce transaction times, save costs and increase customer satisfaction. The solution runs on Sun's popular MySQL open source database and the Sun GlassFish(TM) Enterprise Server, a complete Java (TM) Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application server that provides the foundation to develop and deploy next-generation applications and services.

Mr. Swapan Dutta, Director -Alliance , Developer Relations and TeleWeb Sales , Sun Microsystems India said, “According to studies internationally, it is anticipated 35% of online banking households will be using mobile banking by 2010, up from less than 1% today. Mobile banking will eventually allow users to make payments at the physical point of sale. "Mobile contact less payments” will make up 10% of the contact less market by 2010. The availability of this joint solution at an affordable price point will help banks in India reach out to new customers in a promising way and create “stickiness” among current customers, due to their ability to provide services anytime, anywhere, high rate of penetration, lowest cost of operation and the potential to grow
Sun offers a comprehensive set of products, technologies, and services that provide a complete platform for mobile financial services, enabling flexibility and innovation from the handset to the backend.” he further added

Mr. Sajith Kumar, Vice President- Business Development C-SAM said, “Mobile users have started to fully utilize the data capabilities in their mobile phones as per the business trends observed in India. In India where the mobile infrastructure is comparatively better than the Internet or Broadband infrastructure mobile banking is likely to appeal even more. Keeping this in mind, banks are fast pushing across the entire gamut of retail banking services to customer's mobiles. Together with Sun Microsystems we offer a complete solution enabling banking customers to build a sustainable business model and offer consumers a rich suite of secure mobile applications. We are confident that our innovative offering will enable banks in the country differentiate themselves from competing institutions by providing new and convenient payment options to their customers.”

The Sun-C-SAM ready-to-deploy platform is available today through a competitive pricing structure (Rs. 41 Lakhs + taxes) based on licenses, technical support, and implementation. The offer is valid till March 31, 2009.

About C-SAM
C-SAM, Inc is a pioneer in mobile transactions technology offering a range of mobile phone-based financial and non-financial solutions. It owns eight patents and has filed over 20 more covering the entire spectrum of mobile transactions. It is a privately owned company with offices in Oak Brook, Illinois, Mumbai and Vadodara (India) and Tokyo (Japan). For more information visit www.c-sam.com

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.