| They switch when good deals come up elsewhere and somehow zero-in on the best combination "� I recently learnt how to prune a bill by 'grouping' several phone numbers under one telephone bill, from my college-going nephew. |
| Just three months ago , I argued in this column that the whole business of small ticket money orders could be transferred to or done over mobile phones. Especially since both the sender in the city and the receiver in the village were likely to own one. RBI governor Y V Reddy said, around that time, that mobile commerce needed a strong leg-up. |
| The question is: Can we go a step further and create transaction platforms in specific commodities or services? For instance, I buy a mobile pre-paid card worth Rs 300. I then use it, in addition to talking on the phone, to buy vegetables at the store or grocery shop. |
| For this to work, the grocer or the vegetable vendor has to become a 'merchant'. That is not a difficult task. Telecom switches between some banks and mobile telcos are already in place. In this case, the merchant does not deal with the bank. Instead, he collects from the mobile company, who is, potentially, also dealing or connected with a bank. |
| That makes the telco act like a bank since he becomes an intermediary of sort. Precisely the sort of idea that a central bank would be uncomfortable with, at least in the immediate future. But what if the transacted commodity were mobile talk time? |
| So I credit Rs 10 worth of mobile minutes to my village cousin who credits it to the grocer who, in turn, gives him onions or whatever! |
| Of course, the telcos would not like to transact talk time with each other, at least to start with. But surely they can do it within their fold. The important thing is to position it as currency. It's become that already. Why else would students spend hours discussing cell plans in such detail. |
| (govindraj@business-standard.com ) |
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