If you have a savings account with HDFC Bank and you want to transfer funds from that account to State Bank of India’s mobile wallet, you won’t be able to do so as of now.
This is because SBI and HDFC Bank are yet to reach an agreement on how much the former will pay the latter for such a transfer.
When funds are transferred to a mobile wallet from a bank account, the wallet company has to charge the bank, which is either a percentage of the amount transferred or a fixed amount.
According to HDFC Bank officials, SBI has not agreed to the fee it demanded for such transfer. “We have asked for 1.5 per cent fee per transaction — for the funds transferred from our accounts to SBI’s wallet — which the bank is yet to agree,” a HDFC Bank official in the know of the matter said.
Security concerns
The country’s largest lender is also not allowing its fund transfer from its bank accounts to standalone mobile wallets like Paytm and MobiKwik due to security reasons.
“We are not sure about their security,” said Mrutyunjay Mahapatra, Deputy Managing Director & Chief Information Officer of SBI.
“Their security regime is not audited or inspected or verified by anybody,” Mr Mahapatra said adding that HDFC Bank also does not allow their accounts to fund SBI wallets.
“Our customers’ interest should be protected. We don’t want to expose our customers to frauds.”
Asked about SBI blocking the wallet, MobiKwik CEO Bipin Preet Singh said the restriction had been there for a few months now.
“As an industry, we must define security standards — adherence of which should be mandatory to allow money flow from banking to non-banking financial institutions,” Mr. Singh said.
Following the ban on high- value banknotes, digital payments have seen a sharp increase in business volumes.
According to RBI data, mobile banking transactions were ₹1.13 lakh crore in October and ₹1.04 lakh crore in September for the entire banking system, while in November the figure just for five banks alone was ₹1.24 lakh crore and in December it further went up to ₹1.36 lakh crore.
Medium -term roadmap
The Ratan Watal committee which was set up by the government had recently suggested a medium term roadmap for digital payments to grow substantially over the next three years from the current level of about five per cent of personal consumption and 20 per cent of all transactions.
“Inter-operability is a good thing as a concept and a step in the right direction towards a cashless economy,” said Naveen Surya, managing director of payments solutions firm ItzCash and President, Payments Council of India, who was also a member of the Watal committee.
“Anything against this spirit is not good.”
