Mobile Banking: Service of the Future

RBI gave green signal to Nokia to offer Mobile Money Transfer in partnership with YES Bank. Nokia will now offer mobile money services to its customers from its 200,000 outlets across the country. Customers will now be able to make payments, pay utility bills and transfer money to other accounts. Obopay is the technology partner for YES Bank to enable back-office support for mobile banking. This could be the beginning of Mobile banking revolution in a country like India which has over 600 million mobile connections. Nokia is also in touch with other banks for similar tie-ups. Banks and service providers can learn from M-PESA (Kenya), Smart Money (Philippines) to replicate similar models to suite both rural and urban market scenario. India has a huge potential for this payment channel and could certainly have an impact on the m-commerce in the days to come. The trend will further encourage banks to offer competitive products and services exclusively for mobile banking customers. This new channel can be effectively used to achieve twin objectives of financial inclusion in the rural and new technology adoption in the urban India. However, it is important for banks to give special attention to KYC and AML norms and go slower than aggressive in offering this kind of services.