ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank, and Aircel announced the launch of a mobile banking service, Mobile Money. It is designed for the unbanked population to enable customers of these two organisations to transfer money securely and instantly through their mobile phones without getting connected to data services. ICICI Bank had earlier launched Mobile Money with Vodafone and Tata Docomo.
Mobile Money aims at financial inclusion of those who faces hurdles in transferring money due to lack of branches or ATMs closer to them by offering a gamut of financial services such as deposits and cash withdrawals, money transfer to third parties, self-reload of prepaid mobile credit, and various utility bill payments. The service will be first available in Tamil Nadu to specifically cater to the needs of migrant working population from Tirunelveli now living and working in Chennai. Rollout to other parts of the state and rest of the country will happen during the year.
Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive Director of ICICI Bank said, “ICICI Bank has been leveraging technology to provide conveniently accessible banking services in line with its financial inclusion initiative. The launch of Mobile Money is a part of this strategy, which will enable the Bank to provide reliable banking services through retail outlets of Aircel. These far-flung retail outlets will take the basic banking services to the doorsteps of the customers.”
VISA, the global payments technology company, has been chosen to provide and manage the mobile money platform.
Geoff King, Head of Mobile Banking, Aircel said, “Aircel brings to the partnership not only our mobile network but our attention and care in serving customers every day with many small cash transactions through our vast retailer and distributor setup.”
