Aircel and ICICI Bank has launched Mobile Money, running on Visa’s Mobile Managed Service.The service will be first available in Tamil Nadu to specifically cater for the needs of the large migrant working population from Tirunelveli now living and working in Chennai. Rollout to other parts of the state and rest of the country will happen during 2013.
Mobile operators are increasingly well suited to providing secure and simple financial services and by partnering with banks can play a major role in delivering on the Government’s Financial Inclusion objectives.
Mobile Money aims at overcoming the challenges and meeting the financial needs of India’s unbanked, a majority of whom face many hurdles in managing their finances such as reliability of intermediaries, distance to formal banking infrastructure, legitimate KYC, and financial illiteracy.
Mobile Money launches with a range of financial services on a mobile phone such as cash deposits and cash withdrawals, money transfer to third parties, self-reload of prepaid mobile credit, and various utility bill payments. On sign-up, customers will be able to use the Mobile Money service instantly on any mobile phone even without a data connection service.