India's Yes Bank has teamed up with Twitter on a service that lets customers place missed calls in order to receive tweets via text messages.
In India, as in much of South Asia and Africa, millions of people make "missed calls" - deliberately hanging up before the recipient answers - as a way to communicate messages for free.
In January Twitter paid around $30 million for an Indian marketing company called ZipDial that provides firms with dedicated phone numbers that people can "miss call" in order to receive a reply via text or call with information about the business. Twitter, Disney, Amazon and Facebook have all used the ZipDial service.
In a banking first, Yes Bank is now enlisting the system to communicate its tweets to interested customers who are not online. Once they have placed a missed call, users will have the bank's stream of 140 character missives on news, events and discounts and offers delivered to their handsets via SMS.
Anindya Datta, chief marketing officer, Yes Bank, says: "Yes Bank is committed to usher innovative solutions to help our customers and followers on Social Media to connect with the bank. This innovative partnership with Twitter will facilitate Yes Bank to reach its stakeholders who do not have an online Twitter account, thereby helping us penetrate deeper in the retail segment."