The Hindu Business Line : Money transfer service on mobiles

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Barcelona Feb. 12 If you think that money transfer or sending drafts was tedious, you can now use your mobile phones to send money to your loved ones. The Global System for Mobile Association (GSM) has launched a new service called Mobile Money Transfer (MMT) which enables users to send money from anywhere in the world using short messaging services (SMS).

Bharti Airtel has joined hands with State Bank of India to launch a pilot programme that will eventually enable over 25 million Indians abroad to remit money to India through their mobile phones. "This pilot if successful will be available to all the operators and banks in the country," said Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Enterprises.

Landmark initiative

Announcing the initiative, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Minister for IT and Communication said, "The MMT program is a landmark initiative by GSMA to use the mobile phone as a device to reach increasingly greater economic and social benefits to the growing community of mobile users. The MMT programme is focused on catering to the needs of the large expatriate community of people from developing countries who live and work away from their homes and families and regularly remit money back to their families and loved ones."

Mr Maran was speaking at the 3GSM World Congress being held in Barcelona, Spain. According to industry estimates, the service will benefit over 200 million people worldwide who live and work away from their homes and in 2005, remitted over $230 billion.

"The MMT project is particularly relevant and important for India which is the largest recipient of international remittances from about 20 to 25 million Indians working across 130 countries," said Mr Maran. The World Bank has estimated that in 2005 Indian expatriates remitted over $22 billion.

"The MMT program of GSMA will be particularly useful, as it will overcome the constraint of limited reach of the traditional retail banking infrastructure by enabling transfer of money through a simple SMS. MMT will thus be a simple, easy, expeditious and cost-effective way to remit money back home," said Mr Maran. Indian operators are set to launch the service shortly.

Speaking on the contribution of cellular services in the growth of the global economy, Mr Maran said, "I believe that in no other part of the world is the beneficial impact of the mobile phone as evident as it is in the case of India. Mobile services have now percolated down to the lowest income groups.

The MMT will also have the advantage of converting the mobile into a device for conducting financial transactions. It would give rise to the use of the mobile wallet. It could provide an opportunity to grow micro-finance disbursement and management."

Mr Maran said that the Union Government would sort out any regulatory issues that may come in the way of launching the MMT services.

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Money transfer service on mobiles