New
Delhi: India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) will press into service postmen equipped
with smartphones to go door to door and will open 3,250 customer access points
across 650 districts when it launches operations in March, seeking to cater
largely to under-banked rural areas.
The
bank will leverage the 155,000 technologically upgraded post offices, of which
129,000 are in rural areas, as well as the existing customer base of India
Post, Anant Narayan Nanda, Secretary, Department of Posts, and Chairman of
IPPB, said in an interview.
A
special dispensation from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will enable the
payments bank to link accounts of existing post office savings bank customers
and let them access both on the same screen and perform transactions. According
to Nanda, this will give a huge fillip to existing customers. India Post has
around 170 million savings bank accounts.
“By
December 2018, 2 lakh postmen and gramin dak sewaks carrying mobile phones will
offer doorstep banking to customers predominantly in rural areas. Eventually,
this number will increase to 3.5 lakh,” Nanda said.
The
bank plans to start with 3,250 access points—five each in 650 districts—and
scale up the number every month. It will employ 3,000 people—roughly half the
staff will be on deputation from state-run banks and India Post.
The
bank is in the process of training postmen to carry out basic banking
facilities such as opening bank accounts and conducting transactions on the
mobile phone. Besides assisting customers, the postmen will also teach them how
to perform transactions on their own. They will receive monetary incentives for
both assisted and eventually self-service transactions.
Customers
will be able to access a range of services including net banking, National
Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), Real-time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and
Immediate Payment Service (IMPS). They will be able to pay utility bills,
invest in mutual funds and buy insurance products on the app.
The
gramin dak sevaks and postmen will be trained by banking institutions. An
internal survey by the department showed that between 70% and 80% of postmen
use smartphones for personal use and are active on social networking sites and
should be able to use the app with ease, Nanda said.
At
present, the post office accepts payments of around Rs46,000 crore in cash
every year. With the entire network moving towards accepting digital payments,
a significant portion of this amount could be handled by the banking network,
an indication of the potential available for business.
IPPB
is 100% owned by India Post; it received a payments bank license from RBI in
January 2017 and has begun operations on a pilot basis in Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh.
India
has three other operational payment banks—Airtel Payments Bank, Paytm Payments
Bank and Fino Payments Bank.
“India
Post does have the largest reach in the rural parts of the country and the idea
of financial inclusion through postmen seems very promising,” said Ashish
Aggarwal, a consultant at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
“However, the execution has to be well done to have mass impact. The postmen
need to be well-trained and equipped as even basic banking involves much more
than delivering courier (packages) and letters,” he added.
