Bharti, Western Union tie-up for mobile money transfer service

Bharti Airtel and Western Union today decided to jointly develop and pilot a Mobile Money Transfer service in India. They expect the service to be launched within the next six months.

Banking regulations in India currently do not allow cash for exchange of another 'unit' such as 'airtime', as in the case of mobiles. Only banks and the Indian Post, through money orders, are currently allowed such transfers.

However, following Bharti Airtel's 'preferred partner' agreement with Western Union, Indians living abroad will be able to send money (the pilot will start with $100) within a few seconds to their relatives in India using the wide networks of both the companies.

Bharti soon plans to introduce domestic remittances (within India) too. The top recipients of remittances in nominal dollar terms are India (around $27 billion according to the RBI), Mexico, China, and the Philippines.

Currently, expats wanting to transfer money to India have to go to a Western Union outlet, stand in a queue, fill a form, deposit the cash and then get a 16-digit MTCN. They, then, call or email the MTCN to their relatives who have to once again go to a Western Union location to get the cash.

"This (agreement) will help us move remittances via the mobile in a fast and convenient way, supporting low-value transactions," said Gopal Vittal, director marketing & communications, Bharti Airtel.

For international remittances, all that expats would need to do is to go to a Western Union agent location which will issue a MTCN.

The Bharti Airtel beneficiary (it has 53 million customers) will get notified on his cellphone and can get the money from any of the 45,000 Western Union agent locations, including 8,500 post offices and more than 14,000 bank branches across 5000 towns and cities that Western Union has alliances with.