Brokerages gear up for mobile trading

Most players are awaiting Sebi clearance.

After internet trading, now brokerage houses are betting on mobile trading to boost revenues.

Indiabulls Financial Services, Sharekhan, Geojit Financial Services, Motilal Oswal Securities and Angel Broking are some of the brokerage houses hoping to cash in on the mobile boom in the country with over 100 million users.

Industry officials said most brokerage houses have put in place the mobile trading infrastructure and are awaiting a final go-ahead from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

Online trading technology provider Asian CERC is working with most brokerage houses to implement the technology.

"I think there has been few security issues related to mobile trading, on which Sebi seems to be working on. There should be no risk of hacking . Also, we should guard against the mobile phones falling into wrong hands. We are geared up with technology, which also involves readiness on part of brokerages and telecom service providers to start mobile trading," Sudhanshu Verma, chief executive officer, Asian CERC Information Technology said.

Technology providers, along with brokerage houses, are also looking forward to meet Sebi officials to sort out the issues. "There are few protocols for mobile trading such as SSL certificate in online trading, which ensures the security level of a particular transaction. We hope to discuss these issues with Sebi," said Varma.

The market regulator had allowed net trading in 2000, where upon, the number of trading participants grew significantly but volumes did not match the growth.

At present, mobile services at brokerages are merely seen as a value-add through which customers are given basic stock information.

"We are having the basic infrastructure in place, once the Sebi guidelines come, the technicalities would be completed and mobile trading could start. As compared to online trading, mobile trading could boost trading participation, as the latter is much more flexible and easy to use," Amit Golia, head, e-broking, Motilal Oswal said.

Recently, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) also launched its Mobitrack service, which allows the user to access stock price details such last traded price, change and percentage in each scrip, besides giving information about profile of few specific scrips selected by the user.

Vinay Agarwal, executive director, e-Commerce, Angel Broking, feels regulations for mobile trading would be more or less similar to online trading as security-related issues are already addressed in the internet trading guidelines.

"I don' think there is much of an issue with security as we have already implemented the online trading successfully," he said.

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BROKERING TECHNOLOGY

Indiabulls Financial Services, Sharekhan, Geojit Financial Services, Motilal Oswal Securities and Angel Broking are some of the brokerage houses hoping to cash in on the mobile boom in the country

Bombay Stock Exchange Also launched its Mobitrack service