The Centre is planning to enable all 2.9 lakh Common Service Centres (CSC) functional in the country to start operating as business correspondents of banks, said Finance Minister Piyush Goyal.
Business correspondents are retail agents positioned by banks to offer services at locations apart from bank branch and ATMs.
The Business correspondents are allowed to perform a variety of services ranging from identification of borrowers, collection and preliminary processing of loan applications, collection of small value deposit, disbursal of small value credit, sale of micro insurance, Mutual Fund products and pension products.
Goyal has now extended the option of opening bank counters at CSCs to offer banking and financial services in the remote areas. The following announcements were made at an event organised for signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of Railways and the CSCs, which come under the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology.
“Now, CSCswill be able to work as IRCTC agents and would also be able to book general tickets,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Electronics and IT.
Prasad also announced that on June 15 Prime Minister Narendra will be addressing 2.9 lakh CSCs. Nearly 10 lakh people are employed under CSCs.
