Mobile banking taking off in India (hopefully) with Union Bank

Union Bank of India has announced a pretty comprehensive set of mobile banking services, called Umobile. Further announcements are expected next week, but SMS and WAP options have been revealed.

The UBI will be allowing it’s customers to transfer money between accounts in their bank and other banks, stop cheques, pay bills, shop on-line and buy tickets. The WAP site will have an ATM locator.

From the release:

Lalit Sinha, deputy GM (IT) said “the bank is in talks with educational institutes like IIT for their fees payment service. Our new services will be available on GPRS and via SMS. We will also make it WAP-enabled soon.”

What we think?

Indian ICICI Bank has claimed that roughly 80% of all of it’s customer transactions are done by the customers outside of the branch, using what it calls “self-service modules” like the Internet or telephone banking. Like many other countries, mobile banking just doesn’t seem to have taken off in India yet, mainly because of security concerns.

I really hope that the UBI service does well. This is exactly the kind of mobile banking service I like to see. A broad range of services, actionable via SMS or through a mobile site, that are actually useful to the customer. It’s not quite as cool as that Wells-Fargo iPhone app, but you can’t have everything.