Mumbai: Citibank, the consumer banking arm of Citigroup, has announced the setting up of a special payment gateway to enable online contributions into the ''prime minister''s relief fund'' in support of tsunami disaster relief efforts in India. Contributions can now be made from all Visa / MasterCard / Diner''s cards, domestic or international.

All transactions via the Citibank gateway are exempt of merchant discount fees. The gateway can be accessed via a link on www.pmindia.nic.in, www.sify.com and on the Citibank consumer portal www.citibank.com/india.

Citibank has been an empanelled Bank for accepting contributions into the PM''s relief fund, since the Gujarat earthquake in January 2001 and this online gateway is in addition to the existing facility all Citibank account holders have to transfer funds online to the Relief Fund.

Relief Activities of Citigroup in India Immediately after the news of the tragedy, a specially designated account called the "Tsunami Relief Fund" (a/c # 0173804447) was opened on on December 27, to facilitate acceptance of contributions from both Citigroup employees world wide. Several of Citigroup'' s corporate clients and employees are routing their contributions through this account.

All contributions by its employees will be matched by Citigroup rupee to rupee to add to the overall corpus.

The total corpus will be utilised by two recognised organizations active in the immediate relief work in the disaster struck areas in India including The Indian Red Cross Society and Working Women''s Forum, Citigroup''s community partner based in Chennai.

In addition to Citigroup employees in India contributing a minimum of a day''s pay, several employees operated a 7-day ''relief supplies collections campaign'' across 18 locations in India where Citigroup has its branches. To reach these supplies to the affected people it utilised the services of the NGOs Akanksha, WWF, and Goonj, among others.

The Citigroup Foundation, the banking group''s philanthropic arm, immediately announced $3 million with $2 million going for immediate disaster relief, equally to the International relief agencies and to local relief organisations and $1 for rebuilding communities.

In addition to the US$3 million, the Citigroup Foundation will match employee donations to legitimate non-profit or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in support of the South Asia tsunami relief efforts with a corresponding contribution to the Red Cross.