Payment technology company FINO Paytech is soon to facilitate National Bank For Agriculture And Rural Development (NABARD) in digitising rural banks across five States.
The digitisation drive will cover Haryana, MP, Bihar, Gujarat and Maharashtra, reported The Economic Times.
Fino will be providing over 5000 Aadhaar enabled micro ATMs and financial inclusion gateway services to District Central Cooperative (DCC) banks and Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (PACS) across these States.
“Our endeavour is to use technology to improve banking reach as well as customer convenience. We will deploy Aadhaar enabled micro ATMs across all the 600 branches of the 20 district cooperative central banks in Haryana, including HARCO,” said Satbir Sharma, managing director, Haryana State Cooperative Apex Bank.
“We will also digitise 711 Primary Agricultural Credit Societies associated with the banks to facilitate banking access in villages. Through this initiative we expect to increase our reach in remote villages and double our customer base from the current 3 million in the next 12 to 18 months,” he added.
“With over 90 per cent of the population having Aadhaar, the way forward for rural banking is to adopt this unique number to identify customers and facilitate transactions. Our integrated offerings on the Aadhaar enabled micro ATMs reduces the cost of banking service delivery and at the same time makes banking a lot simpler for customers,” said Rajeev Arora, chief operating officer of FINO Paytech.
“The scope for digitisation of rural banking is immense in these 5 states. Collectively there are around 150 DCC banks and a multitude of PACS associated with them. At a conservative estimate close to 100,000 Aadhaar enabled micro ATMs would be required that would transform the way rural India does banking,” he added.
