The National Payment Corporation of India, on November 22nd 2010, launched Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) in India, with seven Banks enabling transfer of funds using mobile phones. The participating banks include some of the largest banks in India: State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, Yes Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank. The IMPS service will operate as back-end for the banks allowing them to offer a real-time money transfer facility to customers. Interbank money transfer via mobile phones holds much promise - of being the system that will push up usage of mobile payments in India, and bring draw more Indians into the banking system. So far, Mobile payments have failed to take off in India: according to a speech given by RBI Deputy Governor Shyamala Gopinath, despite 40 banks being allowed to do mobile banking, India's mobile banking customer base was 0.887 million at the end of September 30th 2010, albeit, up from 0.616 million at the end of August 2010. India reported 0.49 million transactions of value Rs. 44 crores for September 2010, which works out to an average of Rs. 897.95 per transaction. Gopinath didn't mention the median transaction size, but frankly, the lower the average and the median transaction size, the better: for us, it would serve as an indication that mobile payments are being used for everyday payments. So far, it doesn't appear to be the case. The customer base is still very small. Details of Interbank…
