Mobile banking transactions have reported a phenomenal rise in the first eight months of the current financial year.
Mobile banking transactions in the reported period up to November are already 1.36 times higher than the last financial year, according to the latest reports released by Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
The volume of mobile banking transactions from April-November reportedly soared to 53.086 crore as against 38.949 crore in the last financial year.
Maintaining the momentum, with the increase in the volume of transactions, the value too has improved exponentially. The value of transactions conducted via the mobile banking channel has soared by 1.71 times in the reporting period to Rs. 6,91,964 crore as compared to Rs. 4,04,091 crore in the whole of last financial year.
As of September-end 2016, total wireless (mobile) subscriber base stood at about 105 crore and the wireless tele-density was at 82.17.
Acknowledging the growth in the Mobile banking transactions, R Gandhi, Deputy Governor of RBI said, “With growing use of the Internet on the mobile phone, this medium is becoming a natural channel of choice for both customers as well as service providers. Hence, application-based mobile banking services as well as net banking services for mobile users are being offered by almost all banks.”
“A large number of bank and non-bank PPI issuers (mobile wallet issuers) also leverage on this channel and have introduced their own mobile applications,” Gandhi added.
As per the RBI’s operative guidelines, “mobile banking transactions” is undertaking banking transactions using mobile phones by bank customers that involve credit/debit to their accounts.
Besides, it covers acceptance of transfer of funds instruction for credit to beneficiaries of same/or another bank in favour of pre-registered beneficiaries, accessing the bank accounts by customers for non-monetary transactions like balance enquiry, stop payment instruction of cheques, transactions enquiry, location of the nearest ATM/branch etc.
