It allows low-wage immigrants workers in the Indian urban areas to remit money to their homes using mobile phones.

At the time co-founder Abhishek Sinha, a graduate of BIT Mesra, was working with Mahindra Satyam, and was involved in developing a mobile commerce application for a foreign company.

[citation needed] Eventually inspired by a similar program in Brazil,[5] M-Pesa model in Kenya where Vodafone-enabled subscribers send cash to other phone users by SMS, Globe Telecom and Smart Communications, both in the Philippines, Abhishek Sinha with brother Abhinav Sinha launched Eko in September 2007 with $0.5 million donated by family and friends as a financial service company providing peer-to-peer money transfers, cash deposits and withdrawal, wage and salary payments, micro-insurance, and micro-credit facilities to individuals through small neighbourhood shops, which became their banking agents.

[6] In March 2009 it received a "grant funding" of $1.78 million from CGAP Technology Program which is housed within the World Bank and co-funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Thus around October 2009, with another grant from CGAP Eko started operations[4] with the launch of 'SBI Mini Savings Bank Account' at Uttam Nagar, New Delhi on 23 February 2009, this allowed account holders to carry out financial transactions like deposit and withdrawal from their accounts through their mobile phones at various SBI Eko Customer Service Points, like local grocery stores, stationery stores, petrol pumps, PCOs and pharmaceutical shops in far flung villages of Bihar and Jharkhand and Delhi, where the low-wage people rarely have access to a banking system.