PMO tells expand mobile banking to poor: How to do it?

This is one way where one can do cash transactions with their mobile where apart from traditional services of a normal bank, such as checking balances or moving money between accounts, this mobile banking system should allow people without a bank account to fill a "mobile-phone wallet" with cash to pay bills or send money to relatives and others depending upon their numbers. Though there are very less banks which penetrates rural India and the poor but with the new Initiative from RBI in 2011 there will be many Business correspondents of banks like the 'Kirana shops' and other finance houses which will be acting as a bank which will able to compliment these mobile banking initiative taken by the government.

The towns and cities have been so far built by depriving the rural India and its people. Now is the time that we repay their snatched away contributions. Mobile Banking to them is one of such initiatives.

No more days of "Class Banking" - now we say inclusive growth - and thus come the vast rural people ( really a big market too ). RBI is working on 'mobile banking', its security aspect and normal KYC norms etc. BUT first of all the rural people should have surplus income .. .. !! Is it not ?

May our PMO think over the 'income' issue ... think over the basic issues like  'bread-salt-shelter-clothing' for rural people  ? Then comes surplus and a Mobile in hand. May PMO let us know how and when ? ... OR it  is another 'gimmic' ?

This will be possible only if we see a sea-change in rural India, before we can plan to roll-out such idea.  I recently visited a village of my friend in Maharashtra, and the conditions are not much better compared to 20-25 years back, thouth the Maharashtra is one of the advanced state in India.  Its very true that poorest & uneducated people are using mobile phones freely and effectively.  But just by the reach of mobiles and television to this/such part of country can not be taken as proof of advancement.

The mindsets are to be changed.  Most of the / All merchants prefer/force the cash transactions to hide turnover and avoid taxes.  These merchants straightway refues to accept even cheque payments.  Merchants wants only cash else customer will be asked to pay additional 2-4% of bill amount.  How n where the poor fellow will be able to make a use of mobile banking, where the banking itself is absent?  The important challenges are how to record the poor indian's transactions, how to promote/encourage the use of such facility?  Need educating the poors about advantages of making use it.  It may require to link some insentives for using it, to say home/farming loan.

There is a humongous need of schems like UID, integration with all transaction systems, discouraging paper currency circulation and encouraging plastic currency like Cr/Db cards.

Many more things can be suggested, and can be done.

I think customer education is the big challenge in expanding the mobile banking to poor people.As we can see in villages today,many of the mobile subscribers don't even know the features available in their mobiles(even in case of low end handsets,there are options like sending a request to know your train timings/news/astrology etc. fearing that the charges associated with those services will be more).Same would be the case with Mobile banking too.

One suggestion here in this regard is to make the mobile banking software in a user friendly way and that too in local regional language and also provide the necessary text wherever required to clear the doubts. This would help to reduce the fear among the poor.Adding to this effective marketing would also play an important role in expanding the mobile banking to poor