Nokia Ships Phones With Mobile Banking Service in India

Nokia X1-01, The first phone to ship with Mobile Money in India

Nokia’s Mobile Money will be preloaded in all the phones in India starting today. In a nutshell, Mobile Money allows new Nokia phone owners to transfer funds, pay bills or receive money.

This functionality becomes very useful in India since most banks don’t have branches in the rural area and of course the people who live in the rural regions need access to credits. Mobile Money becomes the bridge to provide convenience to both the banks and the people. To date, India had 827 million mobile connections at the end of April and 34 percent of them are located in the rural areas.

To facilitate better access to credits, the Reserve Bank of India has allowed banks to appoint “banking correspondents” to help with banking issues and matters in rural regions. Banking correspondents could also be shop retailers who will offer banking services on behalf of the bank.

Users can create an account with any correspondent and manage their funds via their phone. Current Nokia phone users who also wish to manage their bank account through Mobile Money can also install the app with the help of the correspondents. Nokia also explained that the mobile banking data can be transfered via SMS, GPRS (general packet radio service) or Wi-Fi, thus a smartphone isn’t necessary for this mobile banking application to work.

So far, Nokia has already partnered with several banks including Union Bank of India and Yes Bank to make Mobile Money possible. What a creative banking solution, really.

[Via PC World]