savramesh 37 Report post Posted June 12, 2009 (edited) Reuters India Fri Jun 12, 2009 2:50pm IST NEW DELHI (Reuters) - When it comes to banking, one immediately thinks of long queues, signing cheque books and ATMs not functioning -- irritants that make banking a tedious task. Not any more. Why go all the way to the bank when you can complete your transactions with the click of a button -- on your mobile phone. The mobile telephony market in India has seen unprecedented growth from 0.2 million subscribers in 1996 to 362.30 million as of January 2009. And with the number of cellphone users expected to grow at about 8 million per month, mobile banking may soon be the only possible way. "Over the next five years we except to see at least 90 percent of all banking customers using mobile banking in one form or the other," says Sai Narain, General Manager, Transaction Banking at Standard Chartered Bank. The advent of iMobile, a mobile banking application, is an innovation which offers offline banking services on the mobile phone. Around eight million customers of ICICI bank, India’s top private lender, have registered for mobile banking. "The use of mobile phones has added to the convenience and ease of banking allowing customers to visit the bank at any time of the day," a ICICI bank official said. Using the mobile phone, customers can access savings, demat, credit card and loan accounts. One could also use it to pay utility bills, check bank balance, book tickets or transfer funds. "So much of money gets transferred from one part of the country to the other through very traditional labour-intensive means like post offices etc., which are still not fully automated,” Sanjay Kapoor, Deputy CEO, Bharti Airtel told Reuters in an interview last month. Therefore, there is a big opportunity there. I believe over 50,000 crore rupees gets transferred every year," Kapoor said. Handsets supporting mobile banking are no different than what we use in our daily lives as most transactions take place via SMS or the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu. In case the customer has a low-end handset, he could use IVR to pay his bills or book tickets. One could do even more with a better handset. "He could even embed his debit card information on the mobile and use it to make payments," says Narain. Currently, banks impose a limit of 2,500 rupees per mobile transaction, subject to an overall cap of 5000 rupees per day per customer. SAFETY Mobile banking is gaining wider acceptability as it is convenient and fast but at the same time it has its own share of risks. Guidelines set by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allow only banks licensed, supervised and with a physical presence in India to offer mobile banking services. Banks are also required to put in place risk mitigation measures like transaction limit, transaction velocity limit and fraud checks. While using the mobile to access your account, “One needs to just take basic precautions such as not to share personal details with any suspicious sites, not click links on e mails from unknown sender,” the ICICI bank official said The RBI has mandated certain authentication procedures for mobile banking, such as validation through a two-factor authentication, one of which is MPIN or any higher standard. In case something does go wrong, the customer should immediately get in touch with the bank and provide details of the transactions. "Based on the information provided, the bank will investigate the matter internally and update the customer with their findings and arrange for any reversals", says Narain. (K s h i t i j Anand is a Reuters journalist. The views and opinions expressed are the writer’s own and not those of Reuters. The article above is not intended to be a financial advisory. Readers must seek specific advice from experts before making investment decisions) Edited June 12, 2009 by savramesh Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
