Indian banks told to halt m-payment schemes

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has called on the country's financial institutions to halt mobile payment services until it has issued operative guidelines.

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Indian banks told to halt m-payment schemes

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In a notification to banks, the RBI says it is currently compiling and evaluating comments on m-payments following the posting of draft guidelines on its Web site last month.

The central bank says it is now finalising the operative guidelines but does not specify when these will be published.

However some banks have already begun offering mobile payments services to customers. In January ICICI Bank launched iMobile, which enables customers to use their handsets to transfer funds and pay bills, while in March Yes Bank teamed with California-based mobile payments start-up Obopay to launch a person-to-person money transfer service.

But A P Hota, chief general manager at the RBI, advises banks to put plans for mobile payments on hold and to "dissociate themselves from any mobile based money transfer service which has not received explicit approval of RBI or not covered by any of the guidelines issued".

However the RBI says banks are free to offer customers information such as credit and debit alerts and balance enquiries through mobile phones.

The RBI's draft guidelines require mobile payments to follow regular money laundering and know your customer (KYC) rules and adopt the message formats being developed by the Mobile Payments Forum of India (MPFI) to ensure interoperability.

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