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Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the formation of a technical committee on mobile banking to examine the options and alternatives including the feasibility of using encrypted SMS based funds transfer using an application that can run on any type of handset for expansion of mobile banking in the country.
Terms of references of the committee include to conduct an in-depth study of the challenges faced by banks in taking mobile banking forward to the desired level; to study the challenges faced by banks in introducing the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) channel and suggest solutions, to consider the advantages/challenges of having a single application across all handsets in an SMS encrypted environment; to examine any other optimum solution that would take mobile banking to every nook and corner of the country and to draw up a road map for implementation of the solutions/options recommended.
B. Sambamurthy, Director, Institute for Development & Research in Banking Technology will head the committee as chairman and Pulak Kumar Sinha, General Manager (Payment Systems)- State Bank of India, Rahul Joshi, Joint General Manager (Mobile Banking & Payments)- ICICI Bank, Anand Rao, Vice President (Alternate Delivery Channels) Axis Bank, Dilip Asbe, Chief Operating Officer, National Payments Corporation of India, Anthony Thomas, Chief Information Officer, Vodafone India Limited C. N. Ram, Ex-Chief Information Officer, HDFC Bank and Pravir Vohra, Ex-President & Group -Chief Technical Officer, ICICI Bank will be members of the committee. Vijay Chugh, Chief General Manager, Reserve Bank of India will be the Member Secretary.
The Committee will submit its report by the end of this December.
