Sneha Bajpai's day starts with an SMS from her banker on the available balance in her account.
The moment Dhatri Subramaniam crosses a limit of 70 per cent over her credit card, Citibank alerts her and, thus, arrests any further spending that could land the teenager in a debt-trap.
On the first of every month, Abhishek Ranade promptly receives an SMS alert from Standard Chartered Bank, reminding him of the approaching due date for his electricity bll payment.
On a Monday morning, Girish Gujral realised that his client has not yet delivered his goods. Immediately, he sent an SMS to HDFC Bank, asking them to stop processing his client's cheque.
Smita Agarwal was driving home back from college, when she decided to make a few purchases to redeem the reward points she had earned on her ICICI Bank-HPCL debit card. No sooner had she SMSed the bank, she got a message giving her the required details.
Welcome to the land of SMSes. With branch and Internet banking becoming a thing of the past, and almost every one of you having access to mobile services, banks are now encashing on this revolutionary gadget by bringing the macro world of complicated banking into a simplified micro instrument: mobile phones.
So now you don't need to visit a bank branch or bear the weight of a laptop on your slender shoulder to do a transaction -- banking is just a couple of digits away.
Day-to-day transactions such as request for a new cheque book, an accounts statement or a balance enquiry are services available on your finger-tips. All you need to do is have a list of acronyms that your bank has standardised, for specific purposes.
For instance, for a balance enquiry, an ICICI bank customer needs to SMS the bank "IBAL". This could be "ITRAN" for details of the last three transactions you have entered into or "ICB" for a new cheque book request.
If you are too guarded about privacy, you could even specify to your banker on when and how often you wish to receive SMS alerts.
The only hitch in this entire three-tier relationship is that you need to cross-check with your telecom service provider on whether you are being charged for the service, as banks usually provide it free of cost.
