Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) service at Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi on Saturday. The postal department's payment service is expected to make mobile banking easy and accessible to people in rural areas.
The service was launched after the department of post received RBI licence for a payments bank. IPPB will now have as many as 650 branches and 3,250 access points across the country.
"The postman has now transformed to a walking, talking bank," said PM Modi, launching the service. The IPPB plans to primarily hinge its service on the strength of three lakh postal service workers at various post offices.
The new payments bank would enable money transfer, payments to traders and shops and other services using Aadhaar authentication. Postmen/women would be equipped with smartphones and a fingerprint device to validate Aadhaar numbers for opening IPPB accounts.
In recognition of the extra work to be put in by the postal employees, Manoj Sinha, minister of state for communications and railways, said the government has decided to hike the pay of postmen/women from Rs 3,000-4,000 per month to about Rs 10,000-14,000.
At the touch points for IPPB, customers could avail purchase of other services like mutual fund, insurance, saving deposits, business loans and many others. The service is expected to augment the network of 50,000 rural bank branches and bring them closer to people.
Free money transfers using UPI, NEFT and IMPS, and payments using QR code card would also be enabled with these IPPB accounts. There are also plans to extend direct benefit transfers to these payments bank accounts.
The money can be withdrawn using ATMs. "This is your bank at your doorsteps," said Modi, calling the IPPB service launch his gift to the nation.
"Going ahead, this technology would trigger a socio-economic change in the country when our villagers are empowered with banking," he said.
In his speech at the function, the prime minister said rural people may lose trust in a political party, but they never fail to trust the postal workers. The IPPB's success is now dependent on having a number of third party agreements with banks and other financial service providers to offer these services and products to rural masses via its platform.
The IPPB app has already been downloaded by the prime minister on his phone and he has also opened a payments bank account. However, following the launch and till the time of going to press, this correspondent did not find a downloadable version of the IPPB app on Google's Play Store.