Now you can create your account with a selfie! All you’d have to do is upload a selfie, a photo of your PAN card taken with your mobile phone, and a scan of the QR code of your Aadhaar card using an app called Chillr.
This app then ensures that it gets your Know Your Customer (KYC) credentials, through which one can open a bank account and conduct transactions up to Rs 10,000 a month.
The app is a mobile payments app that links one’s phone number to the bank account and makes money transfer as seamless as WhatsApp chats.
“Digital platforms reduce the cost of delivery of services tremendously and hence you can serve more customers. The perceptions about the lack of security in mobile transactions have disappeared,” says Sony Joy, CEO and cofounder of Chillr, which has tied up with HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda, Catholic Syrian Bank and others. Money transferred using the app can be withdrawn from ATMs or used to recharge mobile phone cards or pay merchants registered with Chillr.
The company, started in April 2015, sees Rs 75 crore in monthly transactions, with more than four lakh consumers using the app. Unlike mobile wallets, Chillr is a tool to make mobile banking seamless. About half the transactions on the platform are person-to-person money transfers.
This has been enabled by the creation of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which helps in immediate clearing of money transfers without having to wait for the bank’s nod.
“These technologies have enabled banks and entrepreneurs to bring innovation to consumers. It is easy now to onboard customers, and over the long term, it will probably reduce the requirement of banking correspondents (staff who collect deposits from rural areas with bank branches). This, in turn, will reduce the cost of banking,” says NPCI COO Dilip Asbe.
