Online Payments, Now A Phone Call Away

That’s what India Post Payments Bank promises. It can be a game-changer in providing banking services to rural masses. Its rollout, however, is delayed.

- Pratap Vikram Singh

A project worth ₹1,000 crore by the department of post will serve as a shot in the arm for financial inclusion in the country. The department, say officials aware of the matter, has zeroed in on the US based Hewlett Packard (HP) to set up the technology infrastructure for its countrywide rollout of a payment bank – a stripped-down version of a bank that would allow a limited savings deposit of up to ₹1 lakh, but not loans and credit. currently negotiations are on between the two and a formal announcement is awaited.

HP will do an end-to-end job of setting up countrywide points-of-presence of India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) at 1,55,015 post offices, 650-plus branches (the definite number is not yet known), a network and a data centre. It will provide biometric-enabled smartphones to the dak sevaks (postmen). It will also set up a call centre for on-demand deposit, withdrawal and payment, besides providing centralised monitoring.

Under the IPPB, people will have the choice to transfer funds from one account to another by making a request to a call centre – eliminating the need for digital literacy. Acting as business correspondents, the grameen dak sevaks (rural postmen) will carry biometricenabled smartphones to offer on-demand online banking and withdrawal services. People can make a request, either through a message or a call, to the postman to visit them, and avail banking and payment services. The on-demand services would be chargeable, but they would be affordable, ASR Krishna, chief operating officer, IPPB, told Governance Now (see box).

India Post has a battalion of three lakh postmen who go from home to home in the villages under their post office’s network to deliver mail and money orders. Together, they cover most of the 2,50,000 village panchayats — making India Post the largest rural network in the country, both in the government and the private sector.