Transfer Money With Airtel Mobile

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NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel on Tuesday announced a slew of partnerships for mobile commerce services including mobile money transfer.

Bharti said it has entered into agreements with India’s leading banks ICICI bank, HDFC bank, SBI, Corporation bank and also with financial services major VISA to offer three specialised services Mobile Money Transfer (MMT), postpaid bill payment and prepaid recharge. Besides, Bharti Airtel customers can also make payments over their mobiles for air, rail and movie tickets.

These solutions have been developed by mChek, a leading provider of mobile security and payment solutions. Additionally, these services have been certified by PCIDSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), a stringent globally accepted security standard, the company added. The catch is that to avail any of the above applications, all Airtel mobile customers with compatible handsets need to download the application.

Bharti Airtel director marketing & communications Gopal Vittal said that mobile money transfer services would be launched across the country on March 15. “At the first stage, only transfers within India will be possible. Later, we will launch the platform that will help residents outside India to transfer money back home via their mobiles— we are awaiting regulatory clearances for this,” Mr Vittal said.

Bharti has already tied up with the world’s largest money transfer company Western Union for international mobile money transfer services.

Put simply, the mobile money transfer services launched on March 15 will therefore be limited to those customers who have a VISA credit or debit card issued by ICICI, HDFC, or Corporation Bank. Further, the receiver can collect the transferred amount only if they have a VISA card. In addition, SBI customers will be able to transfer money from one SBI account to another SBI account or to any VISA debit/credit card in the country.

Mr Vittal also added that the Bharti planned to roll-out cash-to-cash money transfers by the year-end. “We will require separate regulatory clearances before we can offer this service,” he said.

The post-paid bill payment facility also allows subscribers to pay bills of their friends & family over the mobile. Ditto to the prepaid recharge option. “Airtel has extensively piloted these products across the country. It already has 67,000 registered customers for Postpaid bill payments with over a hundred thousand transactions running into several crore. In addition over 17,000 movie tickets have been bought using this service,” Mr Vittal added.

“We see the mobile becoming the convergence instrument, which allows all banking transactions to be done with complete security and that too on the move. This initiative will help usher in a new era of mobile based payments, more particularly person to person fund transfers,” Group Head – Retail Liabilities, Marketing & Direct Banking Channels, HDFC Bank, Rahul Bhagat said in a statement.

ICICI’s senior general manager Sachin Khandelwal said that the Airtel mChek platform would extend the horizon of banking services to new frontiers.