PM Narendra Modi to launch Post Payments Bank for financial inclusion today

Aimed at expanding the country’s banking services to remote areas, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday will launch India Post Payments Bank (IPPB), a service enlisting the might of the country's postal department in expanding the reach of financial inclusion to the masses.

The event is scheduled to be held at Talkatora Stadium in the Capital along with simultaneous launch events at 650 branches and 3,250 access points that will go live tomorrow, an official statement said.

As a part of the initiative, around 3 lakh postmen will offer services and financial guidance to customers in places where banking facilities are not available. The postal department have a rural penetration of 1,30,000 post offices, almost 2.5 times higher than the number of banks in these areas.

IPPB will leverage the infrastructure of Reserve Bank of India (RBI), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and will use Aadhaar for signing up new users, thereby reducing extraneous costs.

The new payments bank will offer a range of products such as savings and current accounts, remittances and money transfer, direct benefit transfers, bill and utility payments, and enterprise and merchant payments.

The cabinet recently approved an additional funding of Rs 635 for IPPB to be used for technology and human resources. This takes the total outlay for the project to over Rs 1400 crore. The IPPB will have 650 branches, 3,250 access points and 11,000 micro-ATMs at launch. By December 31, it will open 155,000 access points for services across the country, of which 130,000 will be in rural areas.

IPPB will launch with the inherent advantage of a customer-base of over 40 crore people, with over 17 crore Post Office Savings Bank accounts. These customers will now have access to additional banking services of the payments bank.