Barefoot Bankers soon for rural masses

by Surekha Galagoda

The day is very close when rural masses will be able to experience the services of barefoot bankers tapping at their doors with the rapid development of technology. It is already in operation in India.

ICICI Bank, introduced Financial Information Network and Operations Limited (FINO) to the Indian market one year ago. FINO is an organisation incubated by the Bank almost a year back with the sole purpose of providing cutting edge, smart card based multi functional/application solution to the rural masses.

According to Country Head, ICICI Bank, Prem Thampi, FINO was launched on July 13, 2006 with the single objective of building technologies to enable financial institutions (FIs), Banks, Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) and Governments to serve the underserved and the unbanked sector at very affordable cost thereby increasing their outreach and to bring more transparency in their business."

FINO itself is not a vendor of technology but a sectoral resource of technology professionals focused on integrating a robust technology solution which would meet the requirements of these entities.

FINO implements modular solutions/services based on a robust core banking solution, that offers low risk and quick launching of new products and services for its clients in key sectors such as Micro Finance, Banking, Insurance and Government.

Vice President FINO Tarun Agrawal making a presentation said that they used a team of 22 in India to roll out the product but today 122 persons serve the low income sector as they are not served by banks due to several reasons.

He said each agent is given a biometric enabled Point of Transaction (POT) machine which operates off-line on a battery. He said initially the customers of a village have to be enrolled.

All 10 fingers are fed to the POT machine as it works on biometrics, in addition to the photograph of the customer and the account information. At present it takes three weeks from the time of enrolment to the time of handing over of the card and we are working to reduce the turnaround time.

The system can process 3,000 cards per day while plans are under way to increase it to 10,000 cards per day.

He said that every card can handle 15 transactions such as deposits, withdrawals, loans and repayments. Agrawal said that the 32/64 KB Java enabled chip helps to operate the card by swiping it on the POT machine after proper authentication.

There are 250,000 live cards in India while 500 transactions are being done daily. The card can also be used by insurance companies and the Government sector, said Agrawal.

He said that the key challenges to micro banking are the information gap, accessibility and reach, infrastructure, illiterate population and the fool-proof identity. If these conditions can be fulfilled then the challenges can be overcome.

At present 600 mln people don't have access to finances in India but the role and the need of the financial service provider is to take financial and non financial service products to the hinterland, reduce poverty and increase the overall development.

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