Pathik Shah

IMPS ( Interbank Mobile Payment Service) – How It Works, and Why It’s Awesome!

There hasn’t been any single mobile payments solution in India ever, which just works. Sure, there have been a lot of startups which have tried to crack mobile payments using e-wallet services, but most of them pretty much suck. Some like mChek have been good, but they failed to gain much traction. Even Paypal isn’t an option anymore, after the recent RBI crackdown.

Though I have been a huge fan of NEFT (National Electronic Fund Transfer), it is not as usable as I’d like it to be. There is a significant delay in the completion of the transaction, and to effect a transaction, you need to give out your complete account details, which could make anyone a bit apprehensive about using the service.

IMPS allows you to send and receive money using just your mobile number and an MMID (Mobile Money Identifier) which is allocated to you via your bank. You also use an MPIN (password) in order to verify the transaction.

The best thing about IMPS is the ease of use. Soon, all major banks in India will be offering IMPS as a service. All transactions are real-time, enabling you to send money to any IMPS user within a matter of minutes.

You can use it either via SMS or via a mobile application. Most banks will be launching mobile IMPS apps for all major platforms.

More details: IMPS (Interbank Mobile Payment Service)

With IMPS, we now have a robust mobile payments system in place, and we are inching closer to financial inclusion in India.

What Next?

An awesome Payment Gateway, please.

I really hope that the government also launches a standard payment gateway API in collaboration with NPCI, RBI which supports all major Indian banks and allows users to conduct e-commerce transactions easily and securely. (CCAvenue, EBS, DirecPay all suck from a usability perspective.)

Such a move would address one of the major pain points that all e-commerce startups in India face, thereby encouraging more users to buy stuff online and trigger a massive e-commerce revolution in India which could potentially make Flipkart look undervalued even at the rumored $1 billion valuation.