The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has hiked the daily ceiling for banking transactions through mobile phones to Rs 50,000--a significant jump from the present cap of Rs 15,000. Mobile banking, as defined by RBI, refers to the facility, which enables bank customers to access their accounts using an application on their mobile phone.

Mobile banking applications enable payments made from customer's account's through debit/credit on the basis of funds transfer instruction received over the mobile phones. The RBI had capped daily funds transfer to Rs 5,000 and transactions involving purchase of goods or services to Rs 10,000. This limit is now consolidated into a single daily limit of Rs 50,000.

Speaking in a Ficci seminar in December, RBI deputy governor KC Chakrabarty had said that banks had complained that the limit of Rs 5,000 does not permit transactions like purchase of airline tickets and thus this limits needs to hiked.

On Thursday, RBI also said that transaction up to Rs 1,000 can be facilitated by banks without end-toend encryption. However, banks will have to ensure that the risk aspects involved in such transactions is addressed through adequate security measures. At the seminar, Mr Chakrabarty had said that banks had complained that the current requirement of endto-end encryption makes implementation of mobile banking costly and that RBI should do away with this requirement.

Source: Economic Times RBI ups daily ceiling on mobile banking