Around 1.72 crore people are using mobile banking services in the country and private bank HDFC Bank has the largest number of such customers, the government said on Friday.

As on October 2012, nearly 1.72 crore customers are utilising the Mobile Banking Services among the 42 banks which provide the facility, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

According to the list, private sector bank HDFC tops with 88.88 lakh customer-base for mobile banking.

HDFC is followed by public sector banks State Bank of India (SBI) and Corporation Bank with 50.92 lakh and 6.75 lakh customers respectively.

Other banks with a large customer base for mobile banking are ICICI Bank (5.49 lakh), Axis Bank (3.51 lakh) and Bank of Baroda (3.17 lakh).

Jammu & Kashmir Bank has only 130 such customers, while Central Bank of India has 300 customers.

"In order to make mobile banking user-friendly, various efforts have been made for simplification of mobile banking services by the banks," Chidambaram said.

Mobile banking services are being offered on various access channels viz. Short Messaging Services (SMS), Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Mobile Application, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) etc," he added.

In addition, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had recently launched Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) through its National Unified USSD Platform (NUUP) that allows mobile banking services through a common number "*99#", he added.

"Any GSM mobile user can use mobile banking services in a simple, user-friendly, menu driven manner through NUUP platform. BSNL and MTNL are presently offering the USSD service," the Minister said.