BENGALURU: In a news that will bring smiles to millions of basic handset users, the Government has planned to revamp banking services on phones by giving it a new look and feel. With the coming of these services, it is said that almost all dealings between customers and their banks will be possible with a basic handset, especially without accessing the internet, reports Sugata Ghosh and Anandita Singh Mankotia of ET.

Taking the step forward, the telecom regulator has alarmed all the telcos, who are expected to fall in line with local and international payment companies, including Visa, who’s been lobbying with the government for permitting them to tap the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data channel of telcos.

The USSD is nothing but a simple interactive text messaging system that can be used by mobile phone subscribers to reach out to their bank from anywhere and for anything. With the help of this facility the users will be able to access services like PIN change, funds transfer, payment of low value bills, getting new cheque book, bank passbook request and balance enquiries and many more such simple services.

In a recently meeting, Movida a 50:50 mobile payments joint venture between Visa and the UK-headquartered mobile money specialist Monitise sought the intervention of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India for obtaining USSD code from telcos. After which telcos rather grudgingly, had agreed to share their infrastructure with the state-backed payments gateway, National Payments Corporation of India, which features prominently in Modi government's financial inclusion plan.

Given the growth in mobile subscriber base and that 75 percent of users do not have an Smartphone, this would be a welcome decision to increase bank penetration and customer convenience, while lower cost for banks. Under the circumstances, Movida's entry may also give USSD a new push.

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