In a move intended to take mobile banking to every nook and corner of the country, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has constituted a technical committee which would suggest the right technology for mobile fund transfer.

The committee, headed by B Sambamurthy, director, Institute for Development & Research in Banking Technology, will evaluate options including the feasibility of using encrypted SMS-based funds transfer through an application that can run on any type of handset, the RBI said in a statement.

The committee will submit its report by December. Meanwhile, the central bank has sought public suggestions which could be mailed to the department of payment and settlement systems by October 31.

The committee’s terms of reference include studying the challenges faced by banks in introducing the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) channel and suggest solutions. The panel will also consider the advantages and challenges of having a single application across all handsets in an SMS-encrypted environment.

The committee will eventually draw a roadmap for implementation of the recommended solutions.

The committee members include Pulak Kumar Sinha, general manager (payment systems), State Bank of India, Anthony Thomas, chief information officer, Vodafone India and Vijay Chugh, chief general manager and member secretary, RBI.