From just delivering letters and money orders to offering small saving schemes like National Savings Certificate (NSC), Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP) and monthly income schemes (MIS), India Post is gearing up to get additional business. The postal department will start offering core banking solutions across all 500 head post offices by 2011.
Mumbai-based NV Sutar, assistant post master general (savings bank) said, “The government has issued directives to the Department of Posts to implement core banking facilities in every post office in the country. The implementation of core banking facilities will be carried out in three phases across all head post offices.”
“With this, the customers investing in small savings schemes would be able to access their accounts from any place and branch. All post offices will be interlinked through a central server and we are processing the scanned data and signature verification on a war footing,” Sutar added.
There are over 200 million savings accounts across all the post offices in India. The core banking service will enable people living in far-flung places get access to banking services anywhere through these post offices, he said.
Till now small saving deposit schemes of post offices were restricted to the welfare programme of the government. Now the Indian postal department is also looking at offering insurance in rural areas. It also plans to offer debit cards to its account holders. So far the postal department has distributed the debit cards in some parts of the country which would be extended to other post offices by end of next fiscal, Sutar said. - Vidyut Kumar Ta [email protected]