Mobile banking in rural India received a huge push this month with the country’s two biggest banks signing agreements with the two largest mobile-network operators in India for the launch of mobile platforms designed to bring banking services to more consumers.
On Jan. 12, ICICI Bank Ltd. and Vodafone Essar Ltd. announced a joint initiative to introduce mobile-based financial services to unbanked and underbanked residents living in rural India
Under the agreement, both companies will offer such financial products as savings accounts, prepaid-payment instruments and credit products through a mobile phone-based platform that will be available by the middle of this year to existing and new Vodafone customers.
ICICI also will leverage Vodafone’s 1.5 million retail points to serve as business correspondents for acquiring customers and servicing them.
The companies plan to form a joint venture to support that activity by the end of March, an ICICI spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.
With consolidated total assets exceeding U$115 billion as of Sept. 30, ICICI is India’s largest private-sector bank and the country’s second largest bank overall. Vodafone Essar is the Indian subsidiary of Vodafone Group and has more than 120 million customers across the country.
Also on Jan. 12, Mumbai-based State Bank of India Ltd., the country’s largest bank with more than 13,000 branches serving 210 million accounts, and Bharti Airtel, the country’s biggest mobile operator with 150 million customers, announced a joint-venture agreement. They say the new entity will help bring mobile-based financial services to India’s unbanked and underbanked residents.
The joint-venture company will phase in Airtel’s retailers as business correspondents to support mobile-based banking transactions for customers in rural India. The mobile operator has 1.5 million retailers and distributors all over India.
Those retailers or business correspondents will enable existing and new Airtel customers, as well as banked customers, to open bank accounts and access other banking products, a State Bank of India spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.
The joint venture between the bank and Airtel should be finalized by March 31, the spokesperson adds, noting the newly formed entity will offer a mobile-based platform to offer affordable banking products and services.
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