UNE, India – 97 per cent retailers in India don’t have a facility to deal with credit cards. They use cash. And that’s exactly what Nokia Money is designed to help with. By connecting those without bank accounts (the vast majority of people in India) with those who onlydeal in cash, Nokia Money is seeking to connect people in a totally new way – through transactions. We caught up with the head of Nokia Money alliances, Gerhard Romen to see how things are panning out since the service was first announced last September.

Romen was involved in the first banking trial of mobile services back in1999. That was a simple service that enabled customers of certain banksto check their account balance and trade stocks, all using a WAP-based service. By the mid noughties, individual banks started to release theirown mobile banking apps, but still with limitation to broad acceptance.It needed a fresh look and a real compelling  approach and strategy, Romen says and so he and his colleagues set about developing Nokia Money.