India waiting for mobile banking
Ganesh Saini, who hails from a village in Rajasthan, works at a roadside restaurant in Jaipur for Rs 6,000 every month.
In the absence of a bank account, the 22-year-old has no option but to make a trip to his village, some 150 kilometres from Jaipur, every two or three months to hand over the cash to his family.
He would not need to make these frequent trips to his village for long though, as the Reserve Bank of India has given the permission to the country's five operators to launch mobile banking. The operators -- Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Idea, and Telenor India -- plan to roll out the service this year.
Once the service is up and running, Saini will be able to send money back to his family in a matter of seconds from his mobile phone.
He will also be able to store money in his mobile bank account.
“I have my mobile phone with me at all times. It would be of great help,” he added.
Unlike Saini, taxi driver Mojibur Rahman has a bank account and regularly uses the ATM service.
He drives across India, including the remote parts, for his livelihood, and for fear of highway robbery he does not carry too much cash with him.
“We don't have bank branches in the remote areas, so I have to make all sorts of fuel calculations before I start and carry money accordingly.”
But once mobile banking arrives, Rahman need not worry anymore about the amount of cash he should carry before he goes out on a long-distance trip: he will be able to make payments from his phone.
Braj Mohan works at a restaurant in Fatehpur, Agra. He earns Rs 8,000 every month, a good portion of which he sends back to his wife and children, who reside in another district in Uttar Pradesh.
To remit the money, he has to take a half-day leave: the nearest branch of Punjab National Bank is some 35 kilometres away.
He too would be relieved of this monthly inconvenience once the mobile banking service arrives in India, as his wife has a phone of her own.
As of May 2015, there are 975.78 million mobile phone subscribers in India.
Most families below the poverty line have at least one mobile phone, and in rural areas, 40-50 percent of the population have at least one.
“If money transfer services can be availed from one's mobile phone, the poor people will be benefitted,” said Pawan Bakshi, a senior officer of Financial Services for the Poor, a programme of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Under the traditional system, the recipients have to wait for 2 to 3 days to get the money sent to them. “But with mobile banking, it can be received within seconds,” Bakshi added.
Saini is most excited by this feature: the cash he provides his family tends to run low in the lead-up to his quarterly trip home. He will be able to send them money every month.
Comments