in innovation and convenience to customers by leveraging on technological developments. 24. the increasing mobile density is being leveraged upon by payment service providers, both banks and non - banks, to offer the services using mobile as an access device as well as an access channel. in particular, banks are offering mobile banking services through all three channels – sms, ussd ( unstructured supplementary services data ) and application. at present, there are over 67 banks actually offering mobile banking services to over 120 million registered customers, and these numbers are increasing. 25. the regulatory focus in this area has also been to ensure safety of transactions while at the same time facilitate convenience of transacting. transaction limits are applied only where the channel used does not facilitate end - to - end encryption ( such as sms and ussd ). 26. mpesa from kenya has become the ‘ poster instrument ’ for mobile payments. however, do you know that mpesa is offered through a single mobile service provider in kenya while the * 99 # ( which is based on ussd channel just like mpesa ) national unified ussd platform ( nuup ) for ussd based payments introduced in india offers the services by linking all the 11 telecom providers in the country with over 50 banks participating in the system and services being offered in 11 regional languages, besides english. financial and non - financial transactions are supported on * 99 #. 27. with growing use of internet over the mobile phone, this medium is becoming a natural channel of choice for both customers as well as service providers. hence, application - based mobile banking services as well as net banking services for mobile users are being offered by almost all banks. a large number of bank and non - bank ppi issuers ( mobile wallet issuers ) also leverage on this channel and have introduced their own mobile applications. 28. till recently, the mobile banking applications were largely operating in silos, particularly for merchant payments ( which had to be routed as p2b push payments ), and generally not interoperable across merchants and customers of different banks. with the introduction of unified payments interface ( upi ), twin benefits have come into place for mobile banking – convenience of operations for customers ( can provide just a registered virtual address instead of details of bank accounts etc. for making / receiving payments ) and merchant ‘ pull ’ payments. the upi, which is application - based and usable on smartphones with internet access, when fully operational across banks, has the potential to revolutionalis

##e the mobile payments arena. 29. there are many systems in the pipe - line which again have the potential to influence significantly the payment habits of diverse segments of users. the bharat bill payments system, launched two months ago, caters to the requirements of ‘ anytime anywhere anyhow ’ bill payments in the country. the system, which operates under a set of standards will provide a platform for users to have a common experience in bill payments and supports all forms of electronic payments. banks and authorised non - banks will operate as operating units under this 4 / 7 bis central bankers'speeches system bringing interoperability in bill payments eco - system. 30. segmental needs of the msme sector for faster financing and liquidity is being facilitated through the setting up of the trade receivables discounting system ( treds ) which will enable financing of invoices of msme sellers drawn corporate buyers through multiple financiers. 31. besides, our policy is also geared to ensure widening the infrastructure availability for card payments, for which we are proposing the setting up of an acceptance development fund at industry level which can subsidise the cost of setting up the infrastructure. 32. lastly, the large scale coverage of aadhaar biometric identification and its increasing use in government payments ( g2p ) has also encouraged us to consider using it as a potential tool for payment authentication. towards this end, banks have been advised to enable the infrastructure to use aadhaar biometric also as a means of payment authentication. 33. thus, the retail payments ecosystem has not only evolved over the last twenty five years but has also taken a revolutionary trajectory in many areas. whether it is fast payments ( imps ) offered through multiple access channels ( mobile, net banking, atm, branch, ivr, bc, etc ) or mobile banking / payments, cheque clearing or card payments security aspects, our systems are comparable with the best in the world, which is no mean achievement for a country like ours despite challenges in the form of migrating large segments of cash transactions to electronic, financial inclusion, awareness and financial literacy, customer protection, etc. 34. further, in comparison to other countries, the changes in our payments eco - system have been fast - forwarded to reach the present stage in the shortest possible time. innovations in technology are pushing the boundaries of payment processes and the players are keen to adopt newer systems and adapt the older payment mechanisms in new avatars. some concerns 35.