MUMBAI, INDIA–A company that enables India’s banking customers to conduct instant interbank mobile funds transfers is planning to extend the service to enable them to also pay for purchases at merchant locations, the firm’s chief executive told PaymentsSource here March 3 at a technology summit organized by the Indian Banks’ Association.
In November, the National Payments Corp. of India rolled out its instant interbank mobile fund-transfer service (
The corporation is working to create a similar system for payments to merchants, Hota says. “Currently, we only have peer-to-peer transactions allowed,” he says. Hota declined to say when the company would enable retail payments through the mobile funds-transfer service.
With the free P2P service, customers register with their banks, which issue them a seven-digit mobile-money identifier and a mobile-banking PIN. After downloading the mobile funds-transfer application, a customer wanting to transfer funds enters the PIN, the beneficiary’s mobile-phone number and mobile-money identifier, and the amount to send.
The beneficiary receives a mobile-text confirmation when the funds arrive, and he may deposit them into his account, withdraw them at an ATM, or visit a business correspondent to secure the funds in cash. A business correspondent is a bank-appointed official who assists customers in performing basic banking functions on mobile terminals, mostly in rural areas.
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