Reliance Communications ready with mobile banking services

Reliance Communications is ready with its mobile banking services to enable banking transactions for its customers irrespective of mobile handset, make or region, a company statement said here Wednesday.

"Reliance Communications, India's fully-integrated telecom service provider, today announced the service readiness of its USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) platform-based mobile banking services to enable banking transactions for its customers," the statement said.

USSD is a protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the service provider's computers.

"Users can dial *99# short code on their handset, which will allow all customers to access banking service across 29 nationalised banks with a single number - irrespective of the mobile handset, make or region," the statement added.

The company has integrated NPCI (National Payment Corporation of India) gateways with the charging systems and USSD gateways located in Mumbai. NPCI will manage the banking menu and call flow with respective banks, it said.

"Financial inclusion is a national priority and we are proud to launch this platform which can offer basic financial services even in areas that are beyond the reach of traditional banking. Mobile technology has a crucial role to play in servicing the under-banked and un-banked sections of society, and RCOM's endeavour is to bridge this gap with its customized solutions," Vinod Sawhny, chief executive officer, Reliance Communications said.

"This is going to be a game-changer in mobile banking services as not only will this take telcos closer to banks, it will also cover all types of customers," Alpna J. Doshi, chief information officer of the company added.

The company has successfully completed the testing of the service at Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City, Navi Mumbai, on various types of GSM handsets.

"The infrastructure provided is over the secured point-to-point VPN (Virtual Private Network). Subscribers will be charged Rs.1.50 per session, as mandated by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India)," the statement added.