India Post Payments Bank to Boost Financial Inclusion

New Delhi: With a vision to boost financial inclusion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched India Post Payments Bank (IPPB). The payments bank has been launched with the vision to provide the banking and financial services to the last mile with the support of the vast network of postal department.

With the launch of India Post Payments Bank, postman also makes a comeback in an important position. Notably, with the faster means of communication, postmen who were omnipresent earlier receded from the national imagination around two decades ago.

Apart from IPPB, the Prime Minister also launched 650 branches and 3,250 access points of the postal department across the country. The mobile application of India Post Payments Bank was also launched.

While launching the payments bank, Modi said the benefits of the India Post Payments Bank will reach the common citizens and the banking services will be available at every person’s doorstep.

But now he will be the axis of the government’s thrust take new-age banking to the unreached. The IPPB will use more than three lakh postmen and Grameen Dak Sewaks to provide doorstep financial services even in remote areas.

Set up us a 100 per cent government-owned public limited company under the Department of Posts, IPPB is aimed at making banking easy for ordinary citizens. 650 branches along with 3,250 access points at post offices will be live. Also, around 11,000 postmen will be providing the doorstep banking services in rural as well as the urban area.

It has permission to link around 17 crore postal savings bank accounts. All the 1.55 lakh post office branches will be linked by the IPPB services by December 31, 2018. The pilot operations were launched by IPPB in Raipur and Ranchi this year itself.

The most important service to be provided by India Post Payments Bank would be doorstep banking. This service would make the payments bank accessible to all. The postmen will be facilitating the doorstep banking which is being provided with an aim to encourage the adoption of new-age banking and payments instruments as well as ease out the access, especially in the rural areas.

The services under doorstep banking would be opening of accounts, cash deposits as well as withdrawals, third-party services, loans and investments. Apart from this, services such as updating of PAN or nomination details, requesting account statement, issuing standing instructions and QR card issuance will also be provided under it.

On-boarding customers will have to pay nothing for the doorstep banking whereas there is a charge of Rs 15 per digital transaction which is other than cash deposits and withdrawals. For doing cash transactions like withdrawal or deposit the customer has to pay Rs 25 per transaction.