Truecaller adds support for video calling and e-payments
Truecaller, the Sweden-based startup, is quite popular among smartphone users as an alternative to their boring default dialer app. The ability to identify and filter out spam calls makes it the first choice for million of smartphone users worldwide. On Tuesday, at its first annual ‘Stay Ahead’ event in Delhi, Truecaller announced its intention of transforming the brand from a service oriented app to a platform by launching its completely redesigned Android App- Truecaller 8.
At the event, company representatives openly spoke about their future goals highlighting their partnership with Google and ICICI, an Indian Bank in order to integrate video calling and e-payment functionality into new Truecaller app. Alongside these tie-ins, Trucaller decided to integrate its True messenger app with their dialer to bring spam free messaging functionality to its customers.
According to Alan Mamedi, chief executive officer and co-founder, Truecaller: “Spam SMS account for 15% of all SMS messages sent globally, and represents 1.2 trillion spam messages each year. On average, every spam call is about 40 seconds long, so we will help save a lot of time.” On top of it, now users can send flash messages-from a pre-written text library-in just 2 steps. This will be extremely helpful in situations when you are busy or stuck somewhere; just in 2 seconds you can send a flash message to inform someone.
Truecaller Pay is an addition to the list of features as a result of their partnership with ICICI in India. This allows Truecaller India users to send and receive money electronically via their android smartphones. ICICI Bank is providing the technology required to for such services.
“This is based on the feedback received from the market that users wanted to be able to make a transaction straight from their Truecaller app”, said Nami Zarringhalam, CSO and co-founder Truecaller.
The company also tied up with Google to integrate Google Duo, a video calling service, with the app itself. This functionality will be available in next few months for both Android and iOS users. According to Google, the deal aligns with their aim to make video calling simpler, faster and available to everyone.
Truecaller has also launched extended the caller identification for Indian subscribers of telecom operator Airtel where even people with feature phones would be able to use caller ID feature some other features. Airtel’s non-data users will also be able to identify spam calls with this new feature informing them by a flash message prior to the call. This unique way of extending services allows users to get online experience without subscribing to a data pack or buying a smartphone.
Truecaller is not the only company attacking e-payment opportunity in India. In his last visit to India, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton revealed his plans to tap into commercial messaging and digital payment whenever it’s the right time. Hike is another major player in the game with a strong focus on improving quality messaging supplemented with support of regular news, games and stickers.
Anup Singh is a professional writer with a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Durgapur. His love for content writing started 2 years back with writing articles and paper descriptions for college magazine. From then on, he has developed his skills as a technical content writer. He is also a passionate lyricist.
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