Poojit got a call at 11.30 in the night. A friend’s father had to be hospitalised and the friend realised at the payment counter that he was short of cash. He needed Rs10,000 immediately. Poojit wanted to help him, but...
...but the hospital was 50 km from his place, so he couldn’t reach there before it was too late even if he ordered a cab right away. It was beyond banking hours, so online funds transfer was not possible. What now?
All options exhausted quickly. Poojit felt useless...
That was a story before IMPS, the Interbank Mobile or the Immediate Payment System, launched in November 2010 by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). We have left all the online funds transfer hassles far behind. Depending on “bank working hours” is a thing of the past. The innovative NPCI product has broken the banking hours’ barrier.
For those who aren’t aware of IMPS, it is not a private app introduced in the market for experimentation, but an RBI-approved real time payment service started by a government agency. IMPS fits into our lifestyle in more than one way:
The versatile IMPS perfectly complements our high-speed living. It jumps over most of the hurdles – mainly time – in an online funds transfer.
IMPS, the new hero, is unique in another sense. Besides the helping transfer funds 24X7 and 365 days literally, it puts India on the global map by making India one of the very few countries which have such a facility.
To quote Tom Rundle, from the statement he made on Quora last year, even the most developed nations such as Australia, the UK and the US have started refining their online funds transfer systems for a real time settlement in the recent years. He reasons in detail why the senior countries took so long to start with instant funds transfers. In the same quote, he considers India as one of the strongest contenders in this area. Rundle is Head of Payments Improvement for OzForex Group, which facilitates international money transfer, and has seen transfers of over 100 billion dollars.
Most banks have quickly taken to implementation of this facility & are now adding it as a special feature to their services, creating the infrastructure required for instant digital transactions using IMPS. So far, 192 banks have joined this club.
Operational complexity
Cash is no more liquid. It has taken a fourth form. Virtual. Today, a lot of money invisibly flies from account to account at mere clicks on laptops, tablets, even mobile phones. And these clicks have become an integral part of our daily transactions.
Would you still prefer to continue using the same old methods or would you choose your clicks wisely now, and transfer and receive money much faster?