The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has urged the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to abstain it from the costs of providing unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) based mobile banking and payment services.
In a counter-submission to the TRAI, the central agency has rejected the telcos’ call for banks to handle all costs associated with providing such mobile banking services through NPCI.
NPCI has also called on TRAI to push telcos to promote the USSD service through flash messages and communications in order to increase public awareness levels.
Earlier, TRAI, through its draft, Telecommunication Tariff order, had proposed elimination of tariffs for USSD-based mobile banking and payment services to protect the interest of feature phone users and boost digital financial inclusion.
