Deloitte, a New York based multinational professional services firm, has been selected by India Post as their consultant to set up a payment bank which would target unbanked and under-banked customers in rural, semi-rural and remote areas and provide them simple deposit products and money remittance services. An agreement between the two is to be signed on March 14.
The Rs. 800cr proposal of India Post has already been approved by the Public Investment Board and will be present before the Cabinet for final approval, in 15 days.
“Deloitte will be our consultant for payments bank. We will sign an agreement on March 14,” says an official in the Department of Post (DoP).
The pilot for the payments bank is scheduled to start from January and by March it will be in full fledged operations.
Almost 40 international financial groups including World Bank and Barclays have expressed interest in partnering the postal department for setting up the bank.
Reserve Bank had granted permissions to India Post for payment bank considering that the very government body is already into providing financial services and has 1.55 lakh branches across the country.
