Idea Cellular and Mahindra Comviva, on Wednesday announced that Private Recharge, a unique electronic recharge service for women is now live in 14 telecom circles in India. Private Recharge allows women customers of Idea to recharge their prepaid mobile connection and pay their postpaid bills, at any retail outlet without revealing their mobile number.  This has been designed keeping in mind security concerns of women customers and their families. It also empowers women as they are no longer dependent on other family members for doing their recharges and paying bills.

In order to initiate the service, the female customer simply needs to generate a ‘Private Code’ by sending ‘CODE’ to SMS shortcode 55515. The ‘Private Code’ is then shared with retailer for completing the electronic recharge, instead of her mobile number. As Private Recharge works through standard SMS service, it can be accessed by all customers via any type of phone in real-time. Idea Cellular’s Private Recharge facility is powered by Mahindra Comviva’s PreTUPS™ electronic recharge solution. PreTUPS™ stores the mapping between the ‘Private Code’ and customer’s actual mobile number and completes the electronic recharge.

Idea Cellular was the first to offer Private Recharge service in India with launch in Kerala circle in August 2016. The service is now available in 14 circles and will be launched pan India this month.

“Ease of access, convenience and privacy are key to customer service at Idea.  We were first operator in India to offer Private Recharge service and are now rolling this out on a pan-India level. We are glad that Mahindra Comviva is supporting us in this effort and are confident that this deployment will help us in reaching out to women customers and reassure them on privacy and security related concerns,” said Sashi Shankar, Chief Marketing Officer of Idea Cellular.

“We are happy to partner with Idea in their efforts towards supporting women’s right to privacy and security. Private Recharge is an all-inclusive solution which empowers all women, especially in rural areas. We have designed the product keeping in focus consumer’s behavior, cost constraints and education level of resource-poor women in low and middle-income countries like India. We are confident that this product will help Idea to boost the confidence of their female customers and thus empowering them,” said Srinivas Nidugondi, Senior VP and Head of Mobile Financial Solutions at Mahindra Comviva.