Ways to Send Money to India
With a populace of over 1 billion, India is an stellar environment for banking, with cutting edge technology leading the Indian financial scene into the future. India has over 32-thousand ATMs as of December 31, 2007, but an increasing number of customers are finding that the need to visit a bank branch or ATM machine is not what it used to be, thanks to exciting technological advances.
Banks are moving toward granting customers to complete banking transactions using mobile telephones and other handheld technology. Banks, in the past, have utilized technology such as text messages to advertise promotions for users, but electronic transactions will likely replace several types of cash transactions in India within the next several years. The use of technology in banking lowers transaction costs and lessens the need for rapid branch expansion. Now, almost 10% of total bank transactions in India are completed online.
This notion of handheld bank technology is called Mobile Banking, and it is predicted that mobile banking will change the banking industry in India and soon all over the world. Already, 85-90% of mobile bankers do not use ATM or credit cards; they simply use their cell to complete transactions. The technologies utilized to make this style of banking possible is the same technology that runs ATM machines, although it is much cheaper to maintain. India is quite on the forefront of this rapidly growing area of finance.
An increasing number of Indians are also using the web for bank needs, however the majority of banking customers utilizing the Internet limit their activites to monitoring statements and assuring whether or not transactions have been completed. The World-Wide-Web also allows bank users to interact with bank employees to ask questions and inquire about bank products and services, although this is not greatly utilized so far by Indian bank customers.
Traditionally, Indians have not carried a great deal of debt, with consumer debt making up only 4% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, compared with over 60% for nations such as South Korea and Taiwan. Banks are willing to participate in the growing debt loads of Indian consumers. Like China and South Asia as a whole, India is one of the largest growing areas for credit card, ATM card, and cash card services, and studies predict that the credit card market in this region will expand by 15-20% over the next three years. Indian houses currently save 28% of their extra income.
The banking presence is expanding in India, as more International banks and financial companies hurry to compete for the changing banking needs in the country. Demographically speaking, half of India’s 1.2 billion population are below the age of 25, so throughout the next many years, a big group of people will be entering their earning years and will have various banking needs. The banks which find a way to give the services Indian banking customers enjoy a windfall of new customers and profit in the years to come.
