IMPS – Online Money transfer in 30 seconds from your Mobile Phone
POSTED BY ON October 1, 2012 COMMENTS (34)
IMPS or Interbank Mobile Payment Service is a technology which offers an instant electronic fund transfer service through mobile phones between two banks in India. There are other two money transfer systems called NEFT and RTGS already in India, but they are not a mobile payment system like IMPS and they’ll take some time to get settled. IMPS is a real time system of money payment. The service has been developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a section 25 company formed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Bankers Association (IBA). Here’s a testimonial from Harsh, who transferred money using IMPS…
Recently I issued a cheque from one of my account and did a NEFT transfer to build balance but NEFT failed to do the job in 48 hours, in the middle of night i started searching for how to do a instant transfer and then I got to know of IMPS. Registration happened instantly in matter of minutes and shockingly money transfer happened in micro seconds even faster than a google search – (via)
The transfer limit through IMPS is defined by RBI in the Mobile Payment Guidelines issued to banks. The customer can transact on IMPS subject to a daily cap of Rs. 50,000/- per customer overall for transactions through mobile for the funds transfer.
How to do Money Transfer using IMPS
What happens with your do a IMPS Transfer through Mobile ?
When you make a IMPS transfer, your sender mobile first sends this information to the sender bank , which checks the data; whether your MMID is correct or not and if it matches with what it has in its system. If it’s all correct, it debits the money from your bank account and transfers this to the NCPI server, which then transfers it back to the receiver’s bank. The receiver bank goes about checking everything again and then sends the status of the whole transaction to NCPI, which passes it back to Sender’s bank. Both Receiver and Sender are then updated about the transaction through SMS. All this normally takes just about 15-30 seconds for everything to happen and the money gets transferred near instantaneously. 
5 Advantages of IMPS over NEFT and RTGS
Let me enumerate 5 major reasons why you want to register with your bank for IMPS and generate your MMID as soon as possible. IMPS offers some major advantages over NEFT or RTGS money transfer and here they are
When you do an IMPS transfer, it happens instantly within few seconds, so it’s practically real time money transfer, unlike NEFT or RTGS which works in batches and takes time in money transfer. Which means in case of emergencies, you can use IMPS and it will act like a fast money transfer mechanism
You can transfer the money anytime, 24X 7. With NEFT or RTGS , you can’t do money transfer on holidays or even Sundays. You can’t do it outside the working hours defined by the banks. But with IMPS you can literally make transfers in early morning, midnight or whatever time you want.
All you need for making the transfer is mobile number and MMID , so you don’t need to disclose your actual account number or even the bank name.
Making a IMPS money transfer is so easy. All you need is the MMID, Phone number and the amount. The money gets transferred easily so fast. It makes easy for those who fear technology and do not want to deal with it . You can teach this to your parents or some one who is not that technologically advanced.
IMPS Charges
The charges depends from banks to banks . While exact charges details you can find from your respective bank, it seems the charges are extremely low and are on per transaction basis, not on the limit of money. It seems to be Rs 5 per transaction (not confirmed) yet. Apart from the charges from banks for using the service, if you are doing the money transfer using SMS , you will have to pay standard sms charges . However if you use internet or the mobile application, there will be no charges apart from the service charges.
Money Transfer Limit under IMPS
The limit is defined by RBI in the Mobile Payment Guidelines issued to banks. The customer can transact on IMPS subject to a daily cap of Rs. 50,000/- per customer overall for transactions through mobile for the funds transfer. Transactions up to Rs. 1000/- can be facilitated by banks without end-to-end encryption.
Which Banks are part of IMPS Facility
As of now 52 banks are the members of IMPS facility. Some of them have started the IMPS service and some will start it very soon. Those are
- ICICI Bank
- Axis Bank
- State Bank of India
- Indian Bank
- Kotak Mahindra Bank
- Oriental Bank of Commerce
- Union Bank of India
- Andhra Bank
- Canara Bank
- HDFC Bank
- Lakshmi Vilas Bank
- Bank of Baroda
- Indian Overseas Bank
- Bank of India
- Punjab National Bank
- South Indian Bank
- Vijaya Bank
- IndusInd Bank
- UCO Bank
- Federal Bank
- State Bank of Hyderabad
- Citibank
- State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur
- Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank
- The Thane Janata Sahakari Bank
- Development Credit Bank
- Dombivli Nagari Sahakari Bank
- State Bank of Travancore
- Catholic Syrian Bank
- Syndicate Bank
- Yes Bank
- State Bank of Patiala
- Allahabad Bank
- Karur Vysya Bank
- The Greater Bombay Co-operative Bank LTD
- Corporation Bank
- IDBI Bank
- Tamilnad Mercantile Bank
- United Bank of India
- Standard Chartered Bank
- Bank of Maharashtra
- Central Bank of India
- Dena Bank
- Dhanlaxmi Bank
- ING Vysya Bank
- Janata Sahakari Bank, Pune
- Karnataka Bank
- State Bank of Mysore
- The A P Mahesh Urban Co-operative Urban Bank
- HSBC Bank
you can look at the latest list of all the banks and their details here What do you think about this technology ? Will it help in your financial life ? Are you going to use IMPS facility to money transfer through your mobile ?
34 replies on this article “IMPS – Online Money transfer in 30 seconds from your Mobile Phone”
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If I understand correctly, MMID is like my mobile account number. Whenever I want to receive money, I need to share my MMID with the sender. It is safe to share my MMID with everyone.
Please let me know if my understanding is correct.
Yes, you are correct, its safe
Hey Manish,
After reading your article I have generated MMID for my ICICI and SBI savings account thru Mobile banking application (iMobile – ICICI & SBI Freedom – SBI) installed in my handset. Tried transferring funds from ICICI to SBI: – It failed got error 4: “System is unable to process your request”.
But, fund transfer from SBI to ICICI was instant and money was credited in my ICICI account within 10 seconds at No extra charge 🙂
Would try IMPS transfer from ICICI to SBI sometime later.
Good to hear that Pankaj !
Thanks for IMPS post and quoting me manish 🙂
Despite being very useful means of Money transfer, its still in the infancy – it’s quite confusing for people even in IT sector 🙂 Hope soon people will get used to it You replied to a comment here why we still have RGTS and NEFT because not everyone is confortable with different technologies, you will be amazed to know many young people still use Money Order. I hope IMPS can become a great tool in rural india if people are educated properly in distant future.
Thanks again
yes.. i think people in rural india will be ok with mobile transfer , the real challenge is to get them bank accounts and for registering them in IMPS
I have used the IMPS for transfer from ICICI bank to SBI and vice versa. While the transfer from ICICI to SBI worked very smoothly, the transfer from SBI wasn’t smooth and failed.
Anil
Thanks for updating that.. did money get debited from your account or not ?
Hi Manish,
Today I tested IMPS by transferring from Axis Bank to ICICI Bank and again from ICICI bank to Axis Bank. It worked both way smoothly. Money got credited almost real time!! Thanks for this article.
Thanks for checking that and confirm !
I have had very bad experience with imps service of icici bank. I have transferred rs 50k from icici to indian bank sometime in feb 2012. I have got 2 sms from icici while first one confirmed the transaction and second one confirmed the failure of transaction. But my icici account was debited. I waited for a day thinking that the transaction would be reversed. Then I have decided to call up the customer care and as usual after so many calls i got the amount credited back. This process took a whole MONTH. After that i have decided to stick to NEFT which works without any flaws.
Ravi
Thanks for sharing your experience. Do you know enough people who have faced this issue, because we have heard a lot of positive response . I think this case of yours was just one of rare cases.
I am using IMPS since 1 year. I always transfer my money from my own ICICI a/c to SBI a/c and vice versa, by IMPS. No issues at all. Charges are similar to NEFT. Few months back it was absolutely free. Now its chargable but charges are very low.
One more advantage of IMPS: As transaction happens real time, within seconds, we do not lose any interest, unlike in case of RTGS/NEFT, we lose it for transfer period (even though it is merely 1 or 2 days; but it could make difference if higher amounts are being transferred frequently. Any ways, anything above zero is one…:))
Thanks for sharing your experience with IMPS , can you share how much charges you pay ? I got to know that its as low as 10 paisa per transaction .
It was so before 31 March 2012. Now its Rs. 5 + ST, in case of ICICI. Max limit is Rs. 50000 . Not sure its per day or per transaction
Does this feature work on international phone numbers esp. for NRI accounts?
I dont know that yet .. can you check with your bank ?
IMPS is good if everything works fine.
Last week I transfferred money from my ICICI to one of my friends HDFC bank account. Money got deducted from My account but didnt got credited to hdfc. On calling icici customercare they said its all done from there side and contact hdfc. On contacting hdfc they replied they havnt got the money, even though I provided the transaction details and every thing. It took almost 15 days to get the amount back to my account.
With NEFT if the transaction fail the amount used to get reversed in 3 days.
Thanks for sharing that .. while there are good experiences, good to see some bad experiences too ! .. Thanks for sharing this experience. what was the exact issue then ?
What hdfc customer care informed us was though they got money at their end, they put it on hold since some required information regarding the account to be credit was missing. Not sure what information and hw it got missing since I had provided the MMID and mobile number of the account. Once we raised compalint, they credited it to the account. At first they were not even ready to take complaint saying issue was with icici, my friend had to visit the hdfc branch to register the complaint.
Thanks for sharing this info .. I am also not sure what could be the issue !
I took your advice and registered. Gotta find a guinea pig for my next transaction now 🙂
Hey u can transfer the money to me anytime, I can Take that much effort for you…:)
I meant for someone to give me money 😀 hahahahahaha!
Great !
I did not get these line ” Note that both sender and receiver should have their phone and MMID number from their respective banks.”
“Note that before sending the money to the receiver, you should register them once as you do for any bank account”
What i understood is that I need Recievers MMID number and his phone no and also need to register reciver as i do it for using NEFT facility.
So each time before transferring i need his MMID no but i think MMID no should not be shared.
I know i am not getting it correctly. Pl correct me and if possible explain by taking an example how can i transfer money using SMS.
You will need MMID to make a transfer, you need phone number and MMID of the person whom you want to send money .
I’ve never used IMPS. But this sounds good. I wonder, when IMPS has so much better compared to NEFT/ RTGS, why do banks continue using NEFT/ RTGS. Just change the backend processes of NEFT/ RTGS and all the transfers across banks will be instantaneous.
Its just different ways .once can use what they want .. not everyone is comfortable with all technologies !
I have used IMPS a lot. Its very useful If you have more than 2 bank account from different banks and want to transfer money instantly its very useful. This works well on mobile APPS, which needs GPRS/3G/Wifi Connection. I have used this facility with 4 major Banks. Its really cool.
Only limitation only 49K per day if you use Mobile Apps and 1k/day if you use SMS. In ICICI they charge some service change, I guess Rs.5. Other banks I have used its free.
One more additional info, This facility is allowed in ICICI from online banking as well. Even if you don’t have a mobile banking application you can use it.
Thanks for sharing that Saravanan !
Is there any charges invloved in this transfer, facilitation charges etc…
Yes . 10 paisa per transaction
Is the transfer free? No charges?
Rgds,
Jassi