YES Bank has launched a digital banking service, ‘SIMsePAY’, whereby any account holder can do money transfers, pay utility bills, and other mobile banking services without the need for a smartphone or Internet.
The private sector bank has launched the service with the District Co-operative Bank, Dehradun, and plans to launch it across the country.
SIMsePAY is a wafer-thin sticker that can be pasted on to any type of SIM card (standard, micro or nano) of any telecom service provider. This sticker installs a SIM Tool Kit (STK)-based application which can be accessed by the customer on any mobile phone without the need for Internet connectivity.
The bank, in a statement, said the sticker would be linked to a co-branded pre-paid wallet or a pre-paid card (which can be loaded up to Rs 50,000) issued by it or the co-operative banks’ account by the consumer to perform transactions such as national electronic funds transfer/ immediate payment service based fund transfers, check balances and generate mini-statements, payments to merchants, bill payments, top-ups and recharges.
“SIMsePAY will cater to the large section of the Indian population who remain unbanked or underbanked due to lack of access to smartphones and mobile Internet. There are close to 650 million feature phones in use. This represents a large inherent market….,” the bank said, and added that it plans to garner a base of 5 lakh users by 2017.
The product will be offered in a phased manner. The first phase will involve collaboration with co-operative and regional rural banks to target those whose adoption rates of smartphones, Internet connectivity, and access to financial services (or bank accounts) is low or limited.
The second phase will involve outreach to the target segment through the network of over 40,000 YES Bank banking correspondents pan-India.
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