Go Green, SMS the Money

The State Bank of India is planning to quadrapule its branch network not by the conventional branch network manner but by using Mobile Banking. Yes, and the idea is to reach out to all those rural areas where it would be costlier to expand via the conventional branch network way.

The way this works is that the bank appoints a Banking Correspondent (‘BC’) in a village, say the kirana shop-owner, and villagers come and give their deposits to the BC. The BC services them in one of two ways. She has a phone on which the amount is entered and is wirelessly synced to the bank’s server — if the customer has a mobile phone, she gets as SMS receipt and, if not, the BC then prints out a receipt (such a printer-phone set-up, which includes a scanner for fingerprints, costs around Rs 30,000). The BC keeps the money and the bank, which has a deposit from the BC, debits this from that. When the money is withdrawn, another wireless sync gets done, another SMS/receipt gets generated and, this time around, the BC’s deposit account with the bank gets credited.

Photo: catmachine

Source: Business Standard