To date, Vodafone Essar and Bharti Airtel have taken this step forward. The former has tied up with ICICI Bank to offer mobile-based financial services, while the latter has partnered the State Bank of India.
Mobile banking has yet to take off in India, says Dobardziev. Issues now facing the industry concern interoperability. “Operators are now functioning like islands. They have been busy with rolling out networks for the masses and regulators have done little to ensure a common standard. This is a significant liability on the industry.”
However, it’s still early days yet. “Operators in India definitely have an opportunity. They have a vast customer base, matured distribution channels, and have invested significantly in analytics and business intelligence tools to mine their customer bases. All of this is very useful for the financial industry,” says Dobarziev.
As the world’s second largest wireless phone market, India is brimming with potential and steeped in competition caused by a large number of players and the recent implementation of mobile number portability. “We expect other players to enter due to the high potential of this space, but this will only come as the market stabilizes and operators start to look into new levels of growth,” says Dobardziev.