Mobile money services are set to become popular among the aam admi (common man) with NPCI signing agreements with seven telecom companies, A.P.Hota, Managing Director & CEO, NPCI.

The seven telecom companies that have signed agreements with NPCI are Airtel, Idea, Tata Communications, Aircel, Uninor, Videocon and Quadrant.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has convinced these seven telecom companies to provide access to their unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) channel to all bank accounts, Hota said.

This would give a leg up to mobile money services and make them popular even among non-smartphone mobile users, he said.

NPCI is the umbrella organisation of all retail payment systems in India,

An USSD is a protocol used by the GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the service provider’s computers. This channel is more responsive than services that use short messaging services.

“Our effort is to make mobile money services accessible to users of ordinary mobile phones. Currently, mobile money services are available mostly in smartphones”, Hota said.

Talks are also on with MTNL and BSNL and agreements are expected to be finalised soon, Hota told Business Line here.

“It is the efforts of TRAI that has helped us enter into such agreements that could make mobile services popular. A customer using such services will have to pay just Rs 1.50 per transaction”

NPCI Chief also said the Government should in the upcoming budget make announcements so as to encourage mobile money services including mobile banking in the country.

Srivats.kr@thehindu.co.in

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