Dish TV, the Direct to Home (DTH) television services operator, has launched recharge option through Interbank Mobile Payments Service (IMPS). Dish TV customers can utilize the IMPS service through the mobile application ( the company claims that it will soon launch the service on SMS), Dish TV website and Interactive voice response (IVR). For the same, Dish TV has associated with YES Bank to provide IMPS payment option. Any Dish TV subscriber with an account with any bank that supports IMPS merchant payments, can utilize the service.

To use the service, Dish TV customers need to visit the Merchant Interbank Mobile Payment Service (IMPS) section on their Bank’s Mobile Banking application or website/IVR,, and enter following details — Merchant Mobile: 1111222222, Merchant MMID: 9532532, the requisite amount, Payment Reference: (11-digit VC no.of their connection) and MPIN. The company claims that the recharged amount will be transferred to the customer account within a span of 15-20 seconds.

Our Take: As we have mentioned earlier, IMPS has an immense potential to transform mobile payments in India like no other payment system since it charges a nominal amount as transaction fee, the implementation of the service would make it difficult for customers to use the service. For example, to recharge the Dish TV account customers would have to remember the Merchant mobile, merchant MMID, and MPIN, which makes the whole process complicated. We’re curious to see how the introduction of merchant payments affects the total monthly transaction value and the number of transactions recorded by the NPCI.

Other IMPS Merchants: Other IMPS merchants include OxiCash, IRCTC, mobile operators such as Tata Docomo, MTNL, Aircel, Loop Mobile, Idea Cellular,  and BSNL, Internet service provider Tikona, and Airlines such as SpiceJet.

Recently, IMPS had extended the service to merchant payments, enabling mobile banking customers to make payments to merchants and enterprises through this payment mode. Eight member banks of NPCI including State Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Canara Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HSBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and Yes Bank have enabled the IMPS merchant payments service and five banks including Axis Bank, Federal Bank, Dombivli Nagari Sahakari Bank, Corporation Bank and Greater Bombay Bank are in the process of getting the service enabled and is expected to offer the service shortly. Eight banks including ING Vysya Bank, HDFC Bank, Citi Bank, IDBI Bank, Andhra Bank, Karur Vysya Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Bank of Baroda are in development phase of introducing the service.

What makes IMPS interesting is that NPCI had sought RBI’s approval in April this year, to make the mobile payments services by telecom companies like Airtel Money and m-wallet services offered by banks interconnect, in a bid to make them inter-operable which could possibly lead to more mobile transactions, and give a boost to m-commerce.

Dish TV user base: According to the press release, Dish TV has a subscriber base of 13.5 million users. In July, Dish TV had reported the total number of gross subscribers to 13.4 million users.

IMPS User base: In June 2012, IMPS had reported 35.51 million unique customers. It had generated 34,084 transactions, up 8% from 31,553 transactions in May 2012, however the amount transacted had declined massively to Rs 13.16 crore, a 88% dip from Rs 110.44 crore in May 2012. As a result, the average transaction amount had also declined by 88.96% to Rs 386.34 from Rs 3500 in May 2012.