Saturday, March 5, 2011

Inter Bank Mobile Payment Service


Mobile Money Identifier (MMID) is a 7 digit code issued by the bank to the customer for availing IMPS service. MMID is issued to only those customers whose preferred mobile number is registered with the bank. A customer will have different MMIDs for different accounts and all these can be linked to a single mobile number.

Send money using IMPS

  • Login to the Kotak Mobile Banking application
  • Select Banking > Payments > Other Banks - Instant (IMPS)
  • Select your bank account from which the amount is to be debited and enter the following:
    1. 10 digit mobile number of the beneficiary
    2. 7 Digit MMID of the beneficiary
    3. Amount you wish to transfer
  • Verify entered details and proceed with the transaction
  • Receive SMS and email alerts for all IMPS transactions

Receive Money using IMPS

  • Register your preferred mobile number with the bank
  • Get the MMID for your account by:
    1. Sending "K MMID B" as an SMS to 9971056767 or 5676788 from your preferred mobile number registered with the bank. Here 'B' is the last 4 digits of your account number. The MMID for the account will be sent to you via SMS and email alerts
    2. Calling our 24-hour Customer Contact Centre or visiting the nearest Kotak Mahindra Bank branch
  • Share your mobile number and the MMID with the sender

Please note: Transfer of funds via IMPS can be done between banks participating in IMPS.

Its Mobile Buzz All Around In India


There is no stopping the growth of mobile telephony in the country. According to figures released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), over 18 million (1.8 crore) mobile subscribers were added to the country’s mobile network.
TRAI added that the wireless user base grew 2.52 per cent to 771.18 million (77.12 crore) in January from 752.19 million (75. 21 crore) in the previous month.
As has been predicted by experts in the past and has also been stressed upon by the telecom operators, the figures show saturated metro cities and Tier-A markets. Rural and Tier-B towns took the lead in the addition of mobile phone users.
The TRAI report added that the share of urban subscribers in the total number of subscribers declined to 66.42 per cent from 66.65 per cent in the month. However, the share of rural subscribers increased from 33.35 percent to 33.58.
The total number of telephone subscribers have now touched 806.13 million, registering 2.39 per cent growth with overall tele-density in the country at 67.67 per cent.
There was again a decline in the wire-line segment. It declined marginally from 35.09 million in December to 34.94 million at the end of January.
The broadband subscriber base grew 2.70 per cent from 10.92 million in December to 11.21 million in January 2010.
TRAI also released additional information this time, according to which of the 771.18 million subscribers, only 548.66 million subscribers were active subscribers on the date of peak visitor location register (VLR).
VLR is a temporary database of the subscribers who have roamed into the particular area, which it serves. Each base station in the network is served by exactly one VLR, hence a subscriber cannot be present in more than one VLR at a time.
Bharti Airtel led the growth in January with the addition of 3.3 million users. Bharti’s now has 155.8 million users.
Reliance Communications followed next with an addition of added 3.2 million new subscribers, taking its subscriber base to 128.87 million. Vodafone added 3.1 million connections, taking its user base to 127.36 million subscribers. Newer operators, however, showed a dismal performance with a dip in subscriber figures.
Videocon posted a decline of 6.89 per cent, with over one million customers moving out of its network, leaving it with six million customers.
Loop telecom added a meagre 17,541 subscribers.

Mobile users cross 770 million'
VOICE OVERThe total number of telephone subscribers have now touched 806.13 million (80.6 crore)
Over 18 million (1.8 crore) subscribers joined the mobile network in January
Rural and Tier-B towns took the lead in the addition of mobile phone users
Performance of new operators dismal

An IVR Based Service To Verify Any Service via ZIP DIAL


Zipdial – a service which leverages the missed call mechanism – has introduced an innovative approach to work around the SMS restrictions brought about by the complex TRAI regulations. We have covered Zipdial in the past for surveys and also at our flagship event UnPluggd for running contests.
Verification of phone numbers has been usually done by ecommerce sites sending a verification SMS with a PIN to the user. The user then enters the PIN received in the ecommerce site thereby indicating his ownership of the number. This is fraught with its own challenges – e.g. late delivery of SMS (we have tried with the most common SMS gateways and all of them have had some issues with late delivery). Verification of users has become an issue with TRAI mandating that even these have to adhere to rules same as promotion SMS. Therefore the gateways have to block sending these SMS to people on DND list – almost striking a death blow to mobile phone verification.
Well almost. The new service by Zipdial generates a random number to call for an user once the user has submitted his mobile number on the registration form on the ecomm site. The user can call within a specified (customizable) time and his call is disconnected after a ring. The Zipdial system then recognizes the number called, and sends the appropriate message / indication / service call response to the ecomm site.
Myntra, Flipkart have already started utilizing this service for mobile number verification. This solution has several benefits including:
  • Zero cost and simple for end users
  • Immediate verification without any SMS delivery latency issues
  • Cost savings for the web business (no cost of sending SMS)
They also mention Tutorvista – where this service is used for lead generation (same flow as above – but someone would call you after you verify your phone. Although the efficacy for this flow is somewhat circumspect – why wouldnt the user just call a toll free number and talk to a person for his requirement? The SMS flow was different because the user could be lazy and just have the PIN entered. The business would be spending money to call and get requirements from customer anyways – why should they spend it with Zipdial?
However that doesn’t take away the major advantages this powerful system brings to the table. I am sure they would be tweaking the system to polish it for other vendors e.g.
a) giving specific numbers for ecommerce sites (which ecomm sites can advertise)
b) figure out time – elastic verification methods (call any time)
c) Support for other countries including US (I am sure they have this)
d) API based support vs a web page plugin (integrate with mobile apps – and enable calling directly from the phone)
e) Two factor authentication – Some businesses might still require a PIN, could they customise CRBT to say a PIN e.g. even if its a missed call the PIN could be the a ringtone.
Do try out the new service at http://zipdial.com/zipdial/verify and let us know your feedback!