Bankers meet with telcos, UID to spread banking

With a view to spread the reach of banking, bankers will meet telecom industry and government officials here next week to explore the marriage of mobile phone technology with the proposed citizen identification project.

Agents appointed by banks to take basic banking services to the unbanked areas-- also known as business correspondents-- use mobile connectivity but lack of inter operability is a handicap which needs to be addressed.

On other hand, incorporating the government's ambitious project to assign a Unique Identity (UID) number to every citizen for identification will also help make the cumbersome procedure of know your customer (KYC) norms easy for a banking correspondent.

UID numbers can be allotted with the help of banks and in the process lenders can open accounts for the persons who are assigned the numbers. The accounts thus generated could be called the UID Enabled Accounts, Indian Banks Association Chief Executive K Ramakrishnan said.

"The meeting will focus on how to take forward the financial inclusion programmes ahead. Leveraging the mobile phone technology to fit into the Business Correspondent model is important," he said.

The meeting will be attended by heads of State Bank of India and ICICI Bank Unique Identity Authority of India Chairman, Nandan Nilekani, officials from RBI, Department of Information Technology and National Payment Corporation of India and leading telecompanies.

RBI Deputy Governor K C Chakrabarty had recently said that mobile phones as an instrument for conduct of financial transactions, have immense potential to take the process of financial inclusion ahead.

The Reserve Bank, as part of its efforts to promote financial inclusion efforts through the mobile-based platform, recently increased the cap on transferring funds or payments through mobile phones to Rs 50,000 from Rs 5,000 earlier.

The January 6 meeting will also discuss broad standards for ATM-enabled business correspondent model network, Ramakrishnan said.