MAM
PayMate appoints vice pres banking alliances and sales
MUMBAI: PayMate India mobile commerce solutions company which has been aggressively growing its payment eco-system to include online portals, voice portals and retailers has appointed Ambreesh Mohan as Vice President- Banking Alliances & Sales to further strengthen its merchant and bank acquisition initiatives.
Mohan joins PayMate after a long stint as General Manager- Sales & Marketing at Venture Infotek. He has over a decade of experience in the banking sector and his role in the financial services segment included selling to & servicing PSU, New Gen Pvt. banks & MNC Banks in India and neighboring countries.
The mobile phone today is more than just an instrument for voice communication. The number of subscribers, the numerous add-on applications and the convenience of always being handy makes one wonder why the device cannot be used to initiate payments. At PayMate we are making this happen in a safe, secure and convenient way. It’s an exciting space and I look forward to being a part of this lifestyle changing initiative,” says Mohan.
Commenting on the appointment, PayMate India founder and managing director Ajay Adiseshann says, “Ambreesh’s valuable experience in the payments industry will be a great asset in aligning our offerings to banks and merchants. His expertise would give us a great impetus in building an alternate payment channel and more importantly building a new viable category which could redefine the payments space.”
PayMate is currently being offered to Citibank bank credit card and banking customers and will roll out services with other leading banks shortly. PayMate will shortly be available on several leading websites including travel & hospitality, consumer products, matrimony, jobs, apparels, astrology, gifts, NGO’s etc. The company is also in the process of tying up with several offline merchants such as telco’s, utilities, insurance companies, cable and broadband services, tele-shopping etc and will be announcing its tie-ups in a phased manner.
Brands
Apple bites back: the $599 MacBook Neo is the cheapest Mac ever made
The tech giant unveils a budget laptop that packs a punch — and a lot of cheek
CALIFORNIA: Apple has never been shy about charging a premium. So when Cupertino rolls out a MacBook at $599 (approx. Rs 55,000) , it’s worth sitting up straight.
The MacBook Neo, unveiled Tuesday, is Apple’s most affordable laptop to date — undercutting its own MacBook Air and taking a sharp swipe at the budget PC market in one fell swoop. It starts at $499 for students, which, for a machine with Apple silicon inside, is frankly a steal.
At the heart of the Neo is the A18 Pro chip — the same muscle that powers the latest iPhones. Apple claims it is up to 50 per cent faster for everyday tasks than a rival PC running Intel’s Core Ultra 5, and three times quicker on on-device AI workloads. Fanless and featherweight at 2.7 pounds, it runs silently and promises up to 16 hours of battery life. Try doing that on a Chromebook.
The 13-inch liquid retina display clocks in at 2408-by-1506 resolution with 500 nits of brightness and support for billion colours — sharper and brighter, Apple says, than most rivals in this price band. It comes dressed in four colours: blush, indigo, silver, and a zesty new citrus, with matching keyboard shades to boot.
Connectivity is modest — two USB-C ports, a headphone jack, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 6 — but this is a budget machine, not a pro workstation. The 1080p FaceTime camera, dual mics with directional beamforming, and Spatial Audio speakers round out a package that punches well above its weight class.
Apple senior vice-president of hardware engineering John Ternus alled it “a laptop only Apple could create.” That’s the kind of line that makes rivals wince — because, annoyingly, he might be right.
The Neo runs macOS Tahoe, with Apple Intelligence baked in for AI writing tools, live translation, and the sort of on-device smarts that keep user data away from the cloud. It also boasts 60 per cent recycled content — the highest of any Apple product — for those who like their bargains with a side of conscience.
For $599, Apple isn’t just selling a laptop. It’s selling an argument — that good design and real performance needn’t cost the earth. The PC industry had better have a decent comeback ready.
