A senior official of the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) has suggested that certain non-financial transactions such as balance enquires could be shifted from bank ATM machines to mobile phones. The NPCI is talking to mobile operators about making use of the unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) channel to inform users about their bank balances, according to Economic Times.  Users currently use USSD to check their pre-paid accounts and find out more about special offers.

The NPCI, which was set up by the Reserve Bank of India and is backed by leading Indian banks, is responsible for the country’s electronic payment transactions and also runs its Interbank Mobile Payment System (IMPS), which enables mobile subscribers to access their bank accounts.  Mobile banking, particularly sending funds, is largely carried out at present by customers using smartphones. USSD would widen the demographic considerably.

AP Hota (pictured), NPCI’s managing director, speaking at the Economic Times Bank Technology Summit,  said 1.5 million balance enquiries are currently conducted daily through ATMs. “These transactions are free for the customer if it is within the five transactions a month limit,” he said. But the user's bank has to pay the bank that owns the ATM INR5 to INR8 for every enquiry, he said. There are 20 to 25 non-financial transactions available via ATMs and if they were all moved to mobile phones then banks would make significant savings, said Hota.