Bharti Airtel has received approval from Reserve Bank of India to start mobile payment services in the country. With this the telecom operator has become the first in India to get a license of the kind.

As per the service, airtel users can get virtual money in lieu of physical cash which they can store in their mobiles and use for making payments of transactions less than Rs 5000.

"Bharti Airtel was granted the license to use the Semi Closed Wallet by the Reserve Bank of India in this quarter. Semi Closed Wallet are prepaid payment instruments that are redeemable at a group of clearly identified merchant locations. These instruments do not permit cash withdrawal or redemption by the holder," said a statement from Bharti Airtel.

"Currently we are evaluating various options that this licence provides to find out how best we can create a value proposition for Airtel customers. It is imperative to design a safe and convenient deployment before we can take to the market. It is difficult to give an exact timeline for the launch at this stage," Airtel said.

This is a major step ahead both in the telecom industry as well as the financial services segment as mobile payment will also now be considered as a new category in the field of transactions.