TRAI makes new regulations for mobile banking 

Starting with stringent measures to keep pesky calls and SMSes at bay, TRAI has been asking for several reforms for the betterment of mobile customers. They have been successful to a great extent at banning unsolicited calls/messages. It had even asked telcos to maintain tariff transparency by advertising mobile tariffs in newspapers. With the ongoing buzz about mobile money, wherein companies have been promoting how transactions through mobile are convenient and secure, TRAI has decided to come out with some relevant rules here too. It has issued new guidelines for mobile banking, as per reports. All service providers offering mobile banking have to adhere to and meet the quality standard that has been laid down by TRAI. Airtel recently extended its mobile money service to more cities, while Loop also has its mobile wallet services.

These new guidelines include that the access service providers have to facilitate banks for the use of text messages, unstructured supplementary services data (USSD) and interactive voice response (IVR), in order to provide banking services to its customers. Besides, the access service provider can also facilitate banks to use WAP, which is however optional. It has further added that the response time for the delivery of messages for mobile banking services generated by the customer or the bank has to be within a time frame of up to 10 seconds for SMS, IVR, WAP and STK and up to 2 seconds for USSD.

Earlier this year, TRAI had also issued some new customer service guidelines that need to be followed by service providers. It even ordered that call, SMS and data usage must be given to prepaid users. Basically, TRAI has been working hard at creating stringent rules to discipline the ways of telecom while maintaining transparency of mobile services. It had even laid down norms for simpler and secure acquisition of new numbers.