ICICI Bank has introduced iMobile, a mobile application that allows customers to use it in a manner similar to the Internet banking transactions, including transferring funds to ICICI and non ICICI Bank accounts, pay utility bills and apply for insurance premiums. The facility is being offered free of charge, and covers Savings accounts, Demat, Credit Card and Loan accounts. This is a significant move, coming from India’s largest private sector bank (and second largest, overall, after State Bank of India). ET adds that 22 percent of the bank’s transactions last year were via the Internet, up from 2 percent five years ago. The application can be downloaded by SMSing iMobile to 56767661,or via their website. There’s a flash based demo that you can try, here.

I just installed the application: it required GPRS for downloading, or will need transferred via the PC - that might limit usage, and ICICI would do well to tie up with a handset manufacturer. The application can use both SMS and GPRS. I received a security code for activation of the service. The activation process took around 5 minutes, over GPRS. The service identified my bank account based on my mobile number on its own. Some features - like checking for the last 5 transactions, did not work. I wasn’t able to figure out how to activate the bill payment, though. The application has been developed by c-sam, promoted by telecom veteran Sam Pitroda. For starters, it’s likely that the bank will try to get its Internet banking customers to use mobile application (their website now has a prominent iMobile banner and link). The bank to bank funds transfer can be used as a payment system. If banks start launching their own mobile payment services, I wonder what will become of independent third party application services? [via release]