The Department of
Post will be rolling out 10,000 ATMs and 20,000 micro ATMs across the country
by the end of this year.
Finance Minister
Arun Jaitley had announced that to provide better access to financial services,
especially in rural areas, the government will undertake a massive nationwide
roll-out of ATMs and micro ATMs in post offices over the next three years.
DoP has already
announced plans to open 1,000 ATMs by March. Department of Post (DoP) will soon
also approach the Reserve Bank of India for interoperability of its ATMs with
commercial banks as it looks to roll out 10,000 ATMs across the country by the
end of this year.
Communications
and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has asked the department to take the
proposal to RBI on a priority basis as it will help in popularising banking in
rural areas. Interoperability of postal ATMs will help people to withdraw money
from their bank accounts also. Currently, such ATMs can be used if people have
an account in DoP.
The government wants to leverage the vast
network of India Post for implementing the mandate of financial inclusion and
it has received renewed momentum from the Budget recommendations. India Post
has more than 576 ATMs across the country and has also overtaken the State Bank
of India to become India's largest core banking network having 18,231 branches.
By March, all the
25,000 departmental post offices would offer anywhere banking facilities using
core banking solutions. As on February, India Post has issued 1,26,181
ATM/debit cards to its account holders. The Public Investment Board has already
approved the Rs 800-crore proposal from India Post for setting up a payments
bank. PIB, under the Finance Ministry, whets the investment proposals by
state-run entities.
The department is
also in the process of finalising selection of a consultant for setting up of
the India Post payments bank. India Post payments bank will primarily target
the 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 pilot for the
payments bank is set to start from January and the full-fledged operations may
start by March 2017. As many as 40 international financial conglomerates
including World Bank and Barclays have shown interest to partner the postal
department for setting up the bank.
Reserve Bank has
granted payments bank permit to the department, which is already into providing
financial services and has 1.55 lakh branches across the country.