India Post, which won licence to operate a payments bank last year, is likely to secure the Reserve Bank of India’s clearance for interoperability of its ATMs with those of public sector banks soon.
However, as per the norms, India Post — the world’s largest postal service network — will require to create a separate vertical to manage the banking services to qualify for the nod.
According to sources, interoperability will allow individuals to transfer money from their post office accounts to their accounts in any bank, according to an official in the finance ministry. Also, the post office ATMs can be used for withdrawal of money from the bank accounts.
“The vertical will be created to operationalise the post bank licence and ultimately it would get merged suitably with the Post Bank…the vertical will be based in Bengaluru,” the official added.
The Department of Posts has operates nearly 30,000 post offices and 1.50 lakh rural post offices across the country.
Sources suggest that instead of launching the bank operations in one go, the DoP intends to do it in phases, starting with operationalising the ATMs first.
India Post payments bank will primarily target unbanked and under-banked customers in rural, semi-rural and remote areas, with a focus on providing simple deposit products and money remittance services.
The Union Cabinet last month cleared a proposal to set up India Post payments bank with a corpus of Rs 800 crore.
