To say technology is a great leveler cannot be truer than for the mobile phone revolution in India that has changed the concept of communication upside down and resulting in the dawn of an era of level playing fields. The vegetable vendor you buy your daily stuff from, the rickshaw puller that drops you to the market place, your maid servant are all networked through the smart mobile phone in this brave new world. With the surge in the number of mobile phone users, India has around 500 million mobile-phone subscribers today and growing. No wonder that the next generation of e-commerce is going to happen on the mobile platform.
Although m-commerce can be said to be a subset of e-commerce, but with m-commerce there is no need for accessing the PC. M-commerce makes it possible to buy your favourite movie tickets, booking air or train tickets for your next holiday or even doing bank transactions. With E-services like Internet banking and online share dealing also taking place through the mobile platform there is a growing concern for security that can make the transactions secure as in a physical world. To address these issues and others DIT is on the course of a coordinated M-Commerce initiative involving various stake holders to promote an eco system for wider acceptance of m- payments and hence m-commerce both in urban and rural India. Some of the R&D projects supported by DIT include the following:
Mobile Payments Certification Lab
Mobile Payments Certification Lab is a 3 year project implemented by IIT Chennai. The main objective of the project Mobile Payments Certification Lab is to develop inter-operability standards for mobile payments in India. Another task was to develop conformance test procedures for certification of mobile payment systems adhering to the RBI guidelines.
Test bed for voice enabled mobile banking transactions
The main objective of the project "Test bed for voice enabled mobile banking transactions" is to develop a test platform to perform basic functions of voice based mobile banking. The results and data from the study would be used to work out a basic framework used to design full-fledged multi-lingual voice based mobile banking system. The project being executed by Telecom Center of Excellence, IIT Chennai .
For further Information:
Mr. S.A. Kumar
Scientist 'F' & HOD
E-Commerce Division
Telephone No.: +91-11-24361186
Email: skumar[at]mit[dot]gov[dot]in
