The announcement of Boston Consulting Group has got good news for bankers. The Indian mobile industry would generate fee-based income of Rs20, 250 crore in five subsequent years. The income would be divided between banks, telecom operators, service providers and device makers. The major part would go in the kitty of bankers.

The source of this fee was the transactions of $350 billion in the mobile banking and payment space in which chief contributor was urban sector as 70% of the income was expected from them and 30% from rural areas. The factors favoring the mobile transactions were-lower cost of transaction, favorable regulatory environment, the government’s exclusive identification campaign.

Neeraj Aggarwal, partner and Director, BCG India told that providing the mobile technology for services like banking and payment services was very cost effective than to get new branches. According to him, if a business correspondent is facilitated with a mobile phone then he could provide services at much cheaper rates as compared to the services offered in a bank.

For bankers and other industry experts, the mobile banking and payment services would be the next big thing in the financial world.

The efforts made in the past for mobile banking has been proved fruitful and the current move of the government to make payments to its rural employees through it would take mobile technology to another level.