India Post Bank has been given the go-ahead to start processing payments in 2017 following a number of lengthily delays.
The post office’s financial services are seen as a viable provider for India’s rural population, of which a majority do not have access to banking.
230 million Indians, however, do hold savings accounts with the Post Office, which has 139,144 locations across rural areas of the country.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister for communications and IT, announced that a March 2017 start date had been fixed for the banking arm to begin processing. He also noted Deutsche Bank and the World Bank had expressed interest in partnerships.
Waiting times
India Post has been waiting a long time for the green light to set up its own bank. It originally planned to start offering services in March 2014 as part of an enterprise-wide transformation fuelled by Infosys’ Finacle core system.
Finacle was selected by the company following a process that began in 2010 and was charged with turning post offices across India into ‘mini banks’ catering to an average of 7,000 customers each.
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