PayMate has hired Dhruv Singh as vice president of Americas to head its North America headquarters in Sunnyvale.

Singh was previously director of worldwide business development at AMD where he was responsible for all market and sales development strategies, initiatives, and execution for the HP worldwide account.

Prior to that role Singh led the worldwide corporate and professional graphics sales and business development efforts at ATI Technologies.

PayMate was founded in May 2006 and now has over 3000 merchants signed up in India, is an SMS based payment service that allows customers to use their mobile phone as a credit or debit card.

The company is looking to cash in on the multi billion dollar cross border remittance market in the US and sign up some of the millions of Americans that do not have bank accounts.

Says Singh: "PayMate, in a short span of time, has successfully positioned itself at the forefront of the emerging m-commerce business in India. With this expansion, PayMate has the ability to deploy its innovative solutions to a global marketplace."

Earlier this year PayMate formed a partnership with Infonox, a provider of systems for the delivery of financial services to Kiosks and ATMs. PayMate says the alliance will allow merchants and banks that currently use the Infonox platform to offer branded transaction services via mobile phones.