Skip to Content »

Wireless Federation » archive for 'RBI'

Mobile Banking in India soon

  • November 19th, 2008
  • 10:05 am

Mobile Payments with secure transactions at cheaper rates are anticipated to begin within a year, Official said. MPFI ((Mobile Payment Forum of India) Chairman Ashok Jhunjhunwala, said, “We are working with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other members, namely telecom operators, banks and service providers, to enable mass adoption of mobile banking and mobile commerce.” A committee focussing on technology, regulatory, along with a few sub-committees targeting specific issues have been set up. “The Forum has worked closely with the regulator and been responsible for formulation and release of the final operative guidelines for banks on mobile payments issued by the RBI on October 8,” Jhunjhunwala added. A report on “Mobile Banking Transactions in India-Operative Guidelines for Banks” has been prepared by the regulatory committee of MPFI in consultation with RBI.

Obapay gazing mobile banking in India

  • August 7th, 2008
  • 7:44 am

Mobile Banking, a new term for the players who are planning to bring banking to India’s rural population. Yet the final guidelines are not issued by RBI. But the players have started working on the concept of Mobile banking.
Obapay (US-based mobile payment company) is entering Indian market  with the Partnership of Yes Bank is gaming on Indian Mobile Banking.

Aim of the pilot project is to connect with rural population of India which is soon going to be launched in Mumbai. As mobile banking is a quite new concept in India, security issues are up till now a big concern, major reason is that RBI has still not issued final guidelines on mobile banking.

Aditya Menon, CEO, Obopay India, said that “The RBI does have certain value based limits and banks can regulate how much they want to transfer depending on the nature of transaction. We have a two factor authentification procedure and that way unsolicited calls from any bank is not even possible, hence phising won’t happen.”

‘’The US is a serious banking environment, people are much more comfortable with mobile banking, and the facilities needed are much more clearly defined,” said Carol Realini , CEO, Obopay added
Considering the Scenario of Indian Market, with hazy security regulations and challenges of providing multilingual services in the rural environments. Will the 25% mobile penetration in India alone make this a succesful model, is a big question in front of the players.

Final Guidelines awaited on M-Banking (India)

  • July 28th, 2008
  • 7:05 am

To enable banks to roll out cellphones based payment services to their customers, Reserve Bank Of India (RBI) is likely to finalise guideleines on mobil banking soon, a senior RBI official said.
“We are presently examining the comments received in response to the draft guidelines issued. Based on this, the final guidelines will be issued within a period of two weeks,” Reserve Bank’s Executive Director R B Barman told.

As  per the draft guidelines,  the apex bank had proposed that the lenders may allow customers to perform transactions even using the most basic handsets.

Also the customers can use SMS- based facilities to make small payments of up to Rs 1,500.

However, recently, the apex bank asked banks to put their mobile-payment services on hold till the time it issued the final guidelines on the matter.

Barman also talked about the security issues related to it and said “We have to see the various aspect of the mobile-payment service, especially the security aspects of such transactions prior to allowing banks the implementation. We would also examine the functioning of similar services by those banks who presently offer the service.”