TRAI took a big decision, after removing the USSD Fee, users will get free mobile banking facility

TRAI i.e. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has given big relief to mobile users by passing an order on Thursday. Actually, TRAI has decided to remove the USSD Fee. The full form of USSD is Unstructured Supplementary Services Data.

This is a fee that allows feature mobile phone users to make mobile banking and payments even without an internet connection. This facility is mostly used by those users, whose phone does not have internet facility.

Till now feature phone users had to pay a fee for using mobile banking and payment facilities, which is called USSD Fee. Through USSD, telecom companies used to inform users about their banking alerts through SMS or calls and in return some fees were charged from them. The rate of this fee was 50 paise per USSD.

TRAI Removes USSD Fee

On Thursday, TRAI said that with immediate effect, no feature phone users will be charged USSD Fee for mobile banking. TRAI issued a notice saying that, no USSD fee will be charged from customers for mobile banking or payment services and this decision has been implemented with immediate effect i.e. from now on.

TRAI said that they have taken this decision very carefully. The purpose of this decision is to promote digital economy and payments. TRAI said that this new decision will be reviewed for the next two years to see how much it has benefited the digital economy.

Decision taken for feature phone users

TRAI said that the trend of smartphones is increasing continuously in the country but there are still many users who use feature phones and they do not have any internet connection facility.

Such people are deprived of facilities like mobile banking, online payment. In this situation, the role of USSD becomes very large and if its charges are abolished then most of the feature phone users will be able to avail the facilities of digital banking.