Amdocs today announced that it will drive mobile financial services of State Bank of India (SBI) to the unbanked and under-banked population using the telecom network of BSNL.
The company has signed a five-year services contract for the purpose.
SBI has joined hands with BSNL to help the Indian government achieve its goal of providing banking services to 75 million households, including millions of households in rural India.
“Our partnership with SBI is an additional step in bridging the rural-urban digital divide, using BSNL’s mobile network and reach of agents,” said Anupam Shrivastava, director – CM at BSNL.
Incidentally, Amdocs India will be officially announcing the launch of its mobile financial services on Wednesday at a select press meet in Delhi.
Latest market research says 2.5 billion people in the world do not have a bank account and an estimated 1.7 billion do have access to a mobile phone.
Patrick McGrory, division president for Amdocs’ emerging offerings, said: “This represents a huge market opportunity for network operators and banks, and one which does not end with financial inclusion of the unbanked.”
Triotech, one of the partners of the project, will own the overall project management, including developing the end customer and retail application and portal, retail channel management and Tier 1 and 2 services.
“Triotech’s solutions play a significant part in this partnership with Amdocs, BSNL and SBI by completing the ecosystem with end customer and retail application development and service delivery expertise,” said Rajesh Kaul, chief executive officer and co-founder of Triotech.
In March 2014, Amdocs acquired mobile financial services provider Utiba. The Amdocs Mobile Financial Services solution, which is based on Utiba technology, will enable SBI and BSNL to offer customers of any mobile operator in India the option of owning a mobile wallet account.
The mobile financial services from Amdocs will allow SBI and BSNL, two state-run companies, to support merchants and business correspondents on the mobile network, enabling payment and top-up transfers to third parties.
Amdocs’ Mobile Financial Services solution includes a dedicated set of services, covering consulting, implementation, systems integration, software and hardware operation, and maintenance.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com