Chakrabarty: mobile payments uptake low in India

One year since the issuance of the mobile banking guidelines, 21 out of 32 banks have started providing these services, said Kamalesh Chakrabarty, a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Chakrabarty said, however, that there was not much activity in this area with transaction volumes very low. He said one of the issues stated by banks for low uptake of mobile banking facilities was that the transaction limits of Rs5,000 ($107) and Rs10,000 ($214) needed to be revised upward as they did not permit transactions like airline ticket purchases.

He said this raised concerns that the banks may have been targeting only the customers who can book airline tickets or make other large transactions. He said that it was surprising that low-value transactions were not being made given mobile banking being a cheap way to make payments.

He made the comments on 4 December.

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