ICRA Online (ICRON), a subsidiary of rating firm ICRA, and Belgium-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), on Wednesday entered into an agreement for setting up a payment gateway for transactions in mutual funds.
The ICRON-SWIFT gateway will help reduce the time span for mutual fund transactions to one day as against the existing three days. This would be operational by early 2011.
The platform would enable both institutions and retail investors to make payments against purchase of mutual fund units without writing cheques. PK Choudhury, vice-chairman and group CEO, ICRA, said, “The platform will effectively make use of secured mobile messaging system or the email messaging facility for fund transfer advices.”
The system works like this: When an investor logs onto a mutual fund trading platform, provided by various fund houses, he will be asked to either register for net banking or the ICRON-SWIFT gateway.