MUMBAI: State Bank of India (SBI) will open 101 branches running core banking solution (CBS) on July 1, its foundation day. SBI also plans to launch mobile banking the same day, sources told ET. This will make it the first state-owned bank to offer mobile banking.
The branches will be opened by finance minister P Chidambaram in New Delhi. Representatives of the new branches will participate via a videoconference. SBI has 10,100 of its 10,385 branches running CBS — where branches are networked to enable a customer to access his account from any SBI branch.
If SBI can reach even half of its customer base of 1.3 crore, it will emerge as the biggest player in mobile banking. The move comes close on the heels of the RBI releasing draft guidelines on mobile payment.
SBI, which bought its M-banking application from Spanco Telesystems, has been running internal pilots. "So far, it was offered only for staff to familiarise them with the product for effective marketing," said an SBI official.
Besides balance inquiries and transaction alerts, SBI’s M-banking will help users transfer funds up to Rs 1,500. The operator-independent service can be used to pay utility bills and will work on most of the basic handsets.
RBI has mandated that M-banking service must work on all mobile operators and use SMS as a medium for transactions. Many private banks offering M-banking will have to tweak their service to comply with the regulation.
"Looking at the huge and diverse customer base of SBI, we have developed a solution which will work across mobile operators and support various methods of communication," said Spanco Telesystems vice president (technology) Kamal Maheshwari, the company that has developed the solution for SBI.
"Going forward, we plan to add mobile wallet and merchant payment options to the system, which will virtually replace debit and credit cards with the phone," added Mr Maheshwari.
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