On November 22, 2010, NPCI launched Immediate Payment Services (IMPS) to offer an instant, 24-hour×7, interbank electronic fund transfer service through mobile phones.
- IMPS facilitate customers to use mobile instruments as a channel for accessing their bank accounts and put high interbank fund transfers in a secured manner with immediate confirmation features.
- The basic aim of IMPS is to also enable micropayments on low-end mobile devices which support only voice and text, in addition to higher-end phones which could support web browsing or Java application capabilities.
- A person who has subscribed to a mobile payment service should be able to send money to any other person who has subscribed as well. This should be independent of the mobile network and the bank to which either of the persons belong. This is referred to as interoperability and is a key concern for any major technology to be successful.
For IMPS, a customer should have –Â
- a registered mobile account with any network operator in the country, and
- A bank account
- Register for the mobile payment service with the bank
The key features of IMPS Funds Transfer are as follows:
- Instant funds transfer
- 24-hour, 365-day availability
- Credit and debit confirmations to sender and receiver
- Simple and easy to use
- Fast, inexpensive, safe and secure, accessible
Currently IMPS service is provided to the customers over various channels including SMS, Bank Mobile Application and USSD (*99#).
A transaction is initiated by sending the following details:
- Mobile number of the payee
- The seven-digit MMID of the payee
- The amount of money to be transferred
- The four-digit personal identification number(PIN) of the payer
Depending on the type of the transaction, either both parties (payer and payee) or only a single party is notified about the transaction. A successful transaction will be notified by an SMS to both parties.
The mobile payments service is available over a wide range of communication channels. The following communication channels are often used in combination to provide a complete end-to-end service:
- SMS
- WAP
- USSD
- IVR
- Phone based application: J2ME/BREW
- ATM
- Internet
