Mobile money transfer fee cut to 10p

Mumbai: National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has reduced the switching fee for mobile money transfers using the inter-bank mobile payment service (IMPS) to 10 paise from the proposed 25 paise for a successful transaction to the remitting bank. It would be effective from April 1 until the end of the next fiscal.

“We have waived the fee for the current financial year (till March 2011) to promote this product. This service was launched in November last year. As of today, we have already issued 66 lakh mobile money identifiers (MMIDs) — the account number through which one can do transactions on mobile phones,” NPCI managing director & chief executive officer AP Hota told The Indian Express on Monday.

“We are targeting to bring 5 crore bank customers under the IMPS fold by March 2012,” Hota said. IMPS service is the first of its kind in the world, which allows fund transfer between individuals through their mobile phones. It provides any time instant money transfer service through mobile phones to any other person registered for the IMPS service in any of the participating banks. Now, inter-bank funds transfer is done through national electronic funds transfer (NEFT). But the main issue with these transfers is the time lag as this is not a real time service and transactions are settled in batches.

Source: Financial Express