Uninterrupted rural banking with TCS
Traditional Indian banking culture can best be described as one of “going to the bank to update my passbook”, or where rural wage labourers and day earners simply hold onto daily cash with no way to deposit it into a centralized, electronic system.
But the world’s largest digital financial inclusion programme is changing all of this.
Digital literacy in rural banking
In Manapadu, a village in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a group of women gather around Ranjani, some with cash in hand and others with empty and outstretched palms. Ranjani is a local entrepreneur who bridges the last mile between the bank branch and this village with its population of just 2,800. She delivers the cash when the villagers need it and collects deposits from those who have some money to spare.
The ‘bank’ she carries with her is a simple laptop or point-of-sale (PoS) device, with which she carries out the authentication against the villagers’ Aadhar/debit card before the cash exchanges hands.
The branchless banking platform, ‘a pocket mobile bank’, can function on multiple devices – from POS machines to cellphones – and is releasing India’s rural and underprivileged folk from within the invisible folds of an unorganized economy.
With 300 million Jan Dhan accounts having opened through this technology-infused financial inclusion program, as many Indian citizens are now “counted in” and their productivity is accounted for.
That’s not all. The digital banking platform sees 10 million daily transactions from rural locations with 125,000 touch points enabled through TCS’ digital financial inclusion network, proving that technology is that one great last-mile leveller.
Postal services in villages
Similar to the reimagination of rural banking is the makeover of one of India’s most expansive public services – India Post. Postal mail is an essential service, a carrier of vital communication and financial services to some of India’s most inaccessible and off-the-grid corners.
The story of the digital transformation of the post office network sees technology pull together 155,000 post offices into a cohesive inter-linked system that operates on a single platform.
This instance of a public service overhaul puts the world’s largest and most complex postal network as its hero front and centre – a hero who ran the last mile using technology, delivering over 740 million premium mails in the FY19-20 financial year alone.
As part of the India Post digital makeover, mobile POS devices placed in the hands of postal delivery workers mean that if a rural resident can’t get to a post office, the post office will go to them.
It is also important to remember that the Indian postal service provides not just snail mail, but financial services as well. The technology platform has enabled payroll and pension disbursement for over 860,000 people within one year.
Furthermore, in this post office transformation story, the use of the all-encompassing digitalized platform allows for centralized and omnichannel customer interactions – via the web, a cellphone, or, as mentioned earlier, a POS device in the hands of the door-to-door postal worker.
Disclaimer: This media release is auto-generated. The CSR Journal is not responsible for the content
