The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is mooting for a unified platform which can support all variety of mobile payment services including merchant payments, utility bill payments, mobile and DTH recharge through USSD. This was suggested by the department of financial services (DFS), the department of economic affairs (DEA) and the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) promoting a more cashless society to enable financial inclusion. "In order to move towards a less-cash and more digital payment transaction society, prima facie, there appears to be merit in the request of DFS, NPCI and DEA to enable a unified USSD platform which can support all mobile payment services apart from the mobile banking services," TRAI said in its consultation paper (PDF). The consultation paper is also looking at ways to increase mobile banking through USSD and TRAI has also suggested increasing the number of stages and decreasing charges in a single session. The NPCI is currently acting as an aggregator for mobile banking through the USSD code *99#. The paper noted that though all GSM telecom operators were connected to *99# by August 2014 and that the progress of USSD-based mobile banking is below expectations. In May 2016, only about 37 lakh mobile banking transaction attempts reached NPCI's platform. In contrast, the RBI says that there were more than 572 million mobile banking transactions which includes applications as of March 2016. Reasons for slow uptake - Currently, a USSD mobile banking session will allow five stages. The paper argues that this is a challenge…
