The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on Wednesday, released the tariff structure and guidelines for mobile banking services, a step that would help rural customers who do not have access to banks and financial services. The TRAI has prescribed a ceiling tariff for an outgoing unstructured supplementary service data (USSD)-based mobile banking service at Rs.1.50 per USSD session.
“We have come out with a framework to help bank agents to interface with service providers for the use of SMS, USSD and IVR (interactive voice response) channels to provide mobile banking services. The authority wants to utilise the benefits of mobile banking for financial inclusion. A large section of the population, especially in rural areas, do not have an easy access to banks…This facility will help to tide over that shortcoming,” TRAI Chairman Rahul Khullar told journalists here on Wednesday.
The Mobile Banking (Quality of Service) (Amendment) Regulations, 2013 have come into immediate effect, and the Telecommunication Tariff (56th Amendment) Order, 2013 shall come into force on January 1, 2014, TRAI said in a note. USSD technology is used by telecom operators to send alerts to their users. It can be used for pre-paid call-back service, location-based content services, and menu-based information services.
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