How Voda's M-Pesa can be linked to govt's direct transfer scheme

Vodafone India in association with ICICI Bank on Wednesday announced the launch of a unique mobile money transfer and payment service, M-Pesa. With the aim of targeting 700 million unbanked people, the moblile wallet service allows money transfer to individuals, pays utility bills and also withdraws cash if it is linked to a bank account.

Founded in 2007, M-Pesa has seen great success in Africa . It adopts a simple, text-based approach to enable users to deposit and withdraw from specific M-Pesa outlets, transfer and make payments to any bank from their mobile, make payments at retail outlets and pay certain household items, such as their phone bill and utilities.

Using the M-Pesa service, a customer can send up to Rs 5,000 at a time. In a month, he can use this service to send up to Rs 25,000.

“India becomes the eighth country for rolling out of M-Pesa technology and we are very optimistic about this service,” Vodafone India MD & CEO Marten Pieters said.

After the roll out, M-Pesa business head Suresh Sethi said the company would try to convince the government to use the platform for Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) for MNREGS, social security pension and other cash transfer.

In an interview with DNA , Sethi explains how he sees the product playing a role in the government’s ambitious direct cash transfer scheme.

“The determinant today is to transfer money into Aadhar-enabled bank accounts. The challenge still remains on the last mile because the nearest bank could be 50-75 km away from the beneficiary. If the direct cash transfers come into the M-pesa account, the beneficiary could walk into our nearest outlet and withdraw. I understand Jharkhand already has about 70% Aadhar penetration. Once we create this kind of a distribution network, there is a case to push a product like this,” he said.

He said the partnership with ICICI Bank is purely on profit sharing basis.

The service is being initially offered in Kolkata, West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand through over 8,300 agents and would be rolled out soon across the country in a phased manner, the company said.

All a Vodafone subscriber needs to do is get registered at any of the ICICI Bank-Vodafone m-pesa outlets by giving his mobile number and photocopies of the documents submitted at the time of taking the mobile connection.Once the documents are verified and approved by ICICI Bank and Mobile Commerce Solutions (MCSL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vodafone India, customers can do other transactions such as cash withdrawal and money transfer to any mobile number. The sender uses a secret PIN and some simple commands to remit money to his near ones living in a distant place.

Primarily targeting transfer of cash by people, the company launched the service in this part of the country as two crore people have migrated from the eastern region to other parts of the country in search of jobs, it said.

ICICI Bank executive director Rajiv Sabharwal said M-Pesa could be used for greater financial inclusion in the country.

With PTI inputs