Now,use you mobile phone for payments up to Rs 50K

“Keeping in view the need to facilitate the larger acceptance of mobile phone based prepaid instruments as a mode of payment,it has now been decided to bring semi-closed mobile wallet on par with the other semi-closed prepaid instrument,” it said. Those using other semi-closed system payment instruments,were already enjoying the upper limit of money value of Rs 50,000.

Earlier only banks proposing to issue prepaid payment instruments were approaching Reserve Bank for authorisation.

Consequent to the passing of Payment and Settlement systems,Act 2007,all non-bank entities currently issuing prepaid payment instruments and those proposing to issue such payment instruments would have to approach Reserve Bank for authorisation. Banks and NBFCs are permitted to issue and reload such payment instrument at their branches against payment by cash/debit to bank account/credit card.

Under the mobile wallet system,a special application is installed on the customer’s mobile phone through which a transaction is completed. For example,in the case of Corporation Bank,which recently launched a m-wallet service,the customer keys in the amount to be paid after logging-on to the application. The customer gets an automatically generated barcode on his mobile screen after keying in the details,and the merchant then scans it using his own mobile phone’s camera. Within seconds,the payment gets done and the appropriate amount is debited from the customer’s mobile wallet. The customer should initially ask the bank to transfer up to Rs 50,000 from a savings or current account to the mobile wallet.