TCS’ household connect in faraway Norway

OSLO: India’s largest IT services firm, Tata Consultancy Services, or TCS, appears to have a household connect in faraway Norway. In fact, it has majorly altered modes of payment for the Norwegian masses. TCS launched Norway’s first peer-to-peer mobile payment solution ‘Vipps’ with DNB, the country’s largest financial services group, in the summer of 2015. “It’s changed the way people pay small amounts here,” said Mats Ronning, a journalist with the Norwegian News Agency also known as Norsk Telegrambyra.
According to Statista, which is an online statistics, market research and business intelligence portal, Vipps was the most popular mobile payment apps in Norway in 2016.
(Source: Statista.com)
When asked if people there were aware of the Indian association of the service that they use on a regular basis, Norwegian journalists said that indeed most people were, especially the ones who “read up, and generally keep a tab on the news”. However, among the people I spoke with, roughly about 50 per cent of them seemed to be aware of the Indian connection.
“Most Indians here though are aware of the Indian connection,” said Sudipa Chakraborty, a member of the Indian diaspora in Oslo and a content specialist. If it is any index of popularity, the app's name has begun to be used a verb in itself.
“It’s almost become synonymous with small payments here (Norway). It’s much like Google. Just the way you would say I’ll google it instead of I’ll run an internet search, Norwegians say I’ll Vipps you some money,” said Erlend Draget, second Secretary at the ‎Royal Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi.
Norway’s Committee Secretary of the Standing Committee on Business and Industry, Marit Halleraker, also told me that, "It’s common for people in groups to split the bill at a restaurant and reimburse the person who paid via Vipps."
Even small vendors and merchants seem to have adopted, or are open to, Vipps payments.

(Pakistani origin Nazim in his taxi)
For instance, Nazim, a Pakistani by origin and a second generation Norwegian, who drives a cab in Oslo (the capital of Norway), replied in the affirmative when asked about accepting payment via the app. Further assuring this, a couple of food vendors who I chatted with at a Christmas market in downtown Oslo, also told me they accept Vipps payment.

(Christmas market in downtown Oslo)
Aslak Bonde, a journalist with Norway’s Morgenbladet newspaper remarked, “Nobody has small amounts of cash anymore, everybody has Vipps!”
The mobile payments application is not just for account holders of DNB, but can be used by any consumer, says TCS. According to them, “The core of mobile solution, created by TCS is its easy operability as a safe and secure payment option. Vipps makes mobile payments as simple as sending a text message and is available for use on all mobile devices. Another key feature is that it allows short chat messaging between the users.”
DNB, banking group Eika, Sparebank 1 Gruppen and other Norwegian banks last month said that the country’s banks have agreed to combine payment units Vipps, BankAxept and BankID Norge to improve product offering and prepare for competition against global tech firms, according to a Reuters report. “Through this undertaking, the Norwegian alternative is better positioned to compete against the major foreign players,” Vipps CEO Rune Garborg had said in November.