Most people holding a Debit / Credit card of commercial banks face challenges in withdrawing cash when they travel to rural or semi-urban areas where ATMs are not easily accessible.
With this in mind, Payworld, an intelligent electronic processing platform for financial transactions, tied up with the State Bank of India and has come out with a novel scheme to get over this problem.
It has planned to launch”Payworld Cash Point” to make cash available through retail points in areas where ATMs are scarce. Payworld claims this would also be helpful to the millions of people in the rural and semi-urban areas, who have opened bank accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana and have debit cards but no access to an ATM in their vicinity.
“Our initial plan is to launch this scheme with 500 retailers and gradually scale it up to over 5,000 by March-end. The logistics involved in the Payworld Cash Point is very simple. The payment is done by a retailer in cash and not dispensed by a machine. This service will be operated with the help of a small card reader, which needs to be attached with an android smart phone with the help of Bluetooth or by using an audio jack,” says Praveen Dhabhai, COO of Payworld. Payworld is part of the US$2 billion Chennai-based Sugal & Damani group.
Cashout at any authorised shop (a grocer or a pharmacy owner) doesn’t require any extra space and heavy infrastructure for operating the facility. The retailer will use Payworld App installed on the Smart Phone by attaching the card reader to the phone. All he has to do is to swipe the walk-in customer’s Debit card and on authorisation by the bank, pay out the cash. The company has tied up with the State Bank of India to operate the scheme.
Payworld has proposed to install these cash out facilities (Chota ATM) at all the retail outlets under its coverage who show interest in using this as an added benefit for its customers in the assisted E-Commerce model.
Any person with a debit card can take out a maximum of Rs 2,000 from this cash out facility, which only provides technology & hardware to its retailers who opt for this service. “The customer can use any bank Debit card for withdrawing money, says Dhabhai.
Payworld is focussing on Tier III & IV cities and rural areas where Bank branches & ATM’s are scattered.
