Indian government orders banks to enable mobile banking
Indian banks have until 31 March to link all mobile and Aadhaar numbers to savings accounts, and connect customers to mobile banking services, according to government instructions. Currently, 50% of savings accounts in the country are linked to Aadhaar numbers, while 65% are linked to mobile phone numbers. Of the portion of accounts linked to mobile numbers, only 20% are mobile banking-enabled. To speed up the linking process, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has told banks to use "over the air" consent from customers, instead of requiring a visit to a branch or ATM.
New Delhi, March 3

The government has instructed banks to link all savings accounts with mobile and Aadhaar numbers by March 31, 2017, and enable mobile banking for such customers.

Mobile number seeding and enabling the same for m-banking are a pre-requisite for making mobile payments while Aadhaar number seeding is a pre-requisite for using Aadhaar-Enabled Payments System, it added. As per an estimate, currently only 65% saving accounts are seeded with mobile numbers and only 50% with Aadhaar.

Out of the 65% accounts already seeded with mobile numbers, only 20% are enabled for mobile banking.

“To make this process convenient to customers, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has advised the banks to explore ‘Over the Air’ customer consent instead of requiring customers to visit the bank branch or ATM as is required currently,” the statement said. The campaign is to be launched with immediate effect. — PTI