Mobile Payment Forum of India to make mobile payments a convenient channel

MPFI (Mobile Payment Forum of India) is an association comprising of banks, telecom operators, service providers, technology companies, regulatory bodies (RBI-Banking Regulator and TRAI-Telecom Operator), academic and Govt. Institutions ( RTBI, IIT, IDRBT, DIT ) as members. MPFI is a non-profit Society with its board comprising of 15 members from spearheading Institutions responsible for enabling mobile payments in India and its sustained growth. The RTBI ( Rural Technology & Business Incubator) of IIT-Madras and IDRBT (Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology), Hyderabad are the founding Institutions of MPFI with its office located at IDRBT, Hyderabad. Dr.Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor of IIT-Madras is its Chairman, Dr.R.B.Barman, Ex-Executive Director of the RBI, Mumbai is its Co-Chairman and Dr.V.N.Sastry, Associate Professor of IDRBT is its Executive Secretary.

The association has made significant progress in a short span of one year, since its inaugural meeting on 15th September, 2007 at IDRBT. It is working collaboratively with the leading banks, leading telecom operators and service providers. This has been possible with clear direction provided by both the regulators (Telecom-TRAI/DOT and Banking-RBI).

Through this collaborative effort MPFI would work to achieve the following:

- To enable mobile payments in India with secure transactions at low cost through robust technology.

- To provide a forum to share and discuss the learning's, opportunities, developments and constraints (including regulatory issues) of enabling mobile payments in India and for its sustained growth.

- To identify the entities involved and advise the enablers for implementing and running mobile payment systems reliably.

- To create awareness among enablers and users through educational workshops, conferences, seminars, certification programmes, quiz programmes etc.

- To guide banks, telecom organizations, support service providers, financial institutions, government and others for providing mobile payments in an inter-operable and heterogeneous environment including the rural masses.

MPFI has set up Technology Committee, Regulatory Committee and Business Committee and a few sub-committees focusing on specific issues. It has worked very closely with the regulator and has been responsible for formulation and release of the final operative guidelines for Banks on Mobile Payments issued by RBI on October 8, 2008.

Going forward the MPFI would work with RBI and the other members (telecom operators, banks and service providers) to enable mass adoption of mobile banking and mobile commerce.

There are several success stories in the area of mCommerce already in India, which are in tune with global developments of mobile commerce applications benefiting the end customer, for example,

1. "i-Mobile" service launched by ICICI Bank for all their account holders across all operators.
2. "NGPay" service launched by HDFC Bank for all their account holders across all operators.

3. "mChek On Airtel" launched by ICICI, Corporation Bank and supported by other VISA and MasterCard banks.

With these type of several mobile payment services, customers feel satisfied due to convenience of anywhere and anytime banking. The challenges in the development of standards in emerging technology based mobile payment applications and their compliance, quality of service, interoperability, real time settlements, low cost solution, regional language support, global integration, security etc. will enable MPFI to strengthen its activities towards set objectives.

MPFI, through co-operative endeavor with stakeholders in the Industry, will make mobile payments a convenient channel and build customers confidence for multiple services. Mobile Payments will also be beneficial to the migrant workers within and outside the country in near future. The URL of the website of MPFI is http//www.mpf.org.in

Source : Equity Bulls

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