Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Finance

27-April-2012 16:51 IST

Policy on Phone Banking

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued the guidelines for Mobile Banking transaction in October, 2008 which permit banks to provide mobile banking transactions. The guidelines also permit banks to extend this facility through their business correspondents. Complaints/ grievances arising out of mobile banking facility are also covered under the Banking Ombudsman Scheme of RBI. The mobile banking guidelines were further relaxed in May, 2011 to permit mobile banking transactions without end to end encryption upto Rs. 5000/- and in December, 2011 to remove the transaction limit of Rs. 50,000/- per customer per day.

The RBI has framed separate policy for curbing the cases of misuse of credit cards. This includes the requirement of additional factor of authentication for online transactions/ interactive voice response (IVR) transaction, online alerts to the customers for all types of card transaction at all channels irrespective of the amount, mandatory pin validation after every successive transaction at ATMs.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Finance, Shri Namo Narain Meena in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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DSM/SS/SL

Mobile banking regulation expands permissible transactions while enforcing stronger authentication and mandatory card transaction alerts. RBI directives permit banks and their business correspondents to provide mobile banking, with mobile banking grievances covered under the Banking Ombudsman Scheme; the framework was relaxed to expand permitted transactions while modifying encryption and transaction limit conditions. For credit cards, the RBI requires an additional factor of authentication for online and IVR transactions, mandatory transaction alerts to customers across all channels regardless of amount, and PIN validation after successive ATM transactions.