The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is attempting to encourage the uptake of mobile baking in India.
To this end, it has released the ?Mobile Banking (Quality of Service) Regulations 2012?. This is aimed at defining the Quality of Service (QoS) standards for mobile banking, in order to facilitate faster and reliable communication means to enable the service.
The regulator has released the document following multiple rounds of consultation with stakeholders. Also, prior to this, TRAI had issued a consultation paper requesting stakeholders for their views on the subject. The consultation paper attempted to define the QoS parameters for facilitating mobile-based financial transactions.
Broadly, the regulations state:
- The access service providers are to facilitate the banks to use SMS, USSD and IVR to provide banking services to its customers. The access providers can also optionally facilitate the banks to use WAP or STK
- The response time to deliver the message for mobile banking services generated by the customer or the bank ought to be within the timeframe of less than or equal to 10 seconds for SMS, WAP, IVR and STK and less than or equal to two seconds for USSD
- If the SMS sent by the bank is not delivered within the aforementioned timeframe, an USSD communication should be sent to the customer confirming completion of the transaction.
- For mobile-based financial transactions, the operators are required to meet the QoS standards defined by TRAI.
- Operators are required to maintain complete and accurate records of such transactions.
