Mobile banking fees waived till year end

Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said on Tuesday that telecom operators would waive mobile banking charges till December 31 to help people facing a cash crunch in the wake of demonetisation.

“At present, a charge is being levied by operators for the mobile banking service, known as USSD (unstructured supplementary service data) charge,” Mr. Sinha said in a statement. “To facilitate use of electronic banking facility and reduce difficulty to the common man, telecom operators have decided to waive off charges for mobile banking services till December 31, 2016,” he said.

Leading telcos including Bharti Airtel and Vodafone confirmed the development. A spokesperson for Bharti said that the company would encourage customers to leverage this benefit for their convenience. Sunil Sood, MD & CEO, Vodafone India said that the company would waive charges to ease the burden of the masses.

Separately, the telecom regulator cut the transaction cost for mobile short codes to 50 paise from Rs 1.50.

Source : The Hindu