Chennai GPO may be first T.N. post bank: The Hindu News
New endeavour:The Postal Department is planning to offer banking services, particularly in rural areas. —Photo: V. Ganesan |
Chennai General Post Office (GPO) is likely to be first post bank in the
State to be launched early next year. The Department of Posts is planning to
set up ‘India Post Payment Banks’ (IPPB) using the postal network to provide
banking services to people.
Aimed at providing access to banking services to people particularly in
rural areas, the IPPB will provide a range of services, including direct
benefit transfers and facilitate various payments like old age pension and
government subsidies. The vast network of post offices would be used to
eventually even deliver the payment at the doorstep of customers. Officials of
the postal department said such post banks would function as separate entity
and function according to the guidelines of Reserve Bank of India.
Mervin Alexander, postmaster General (Chennai city region), said,
“Payment banks will deal with money remittances of all kinds to people. This
could be useful to people particularly in rural areas who have limited access
to banks. But, it will not provide loans. However, savings schemes and deposits
will remain under post offices at this point of time.” Earlier, core banking
network solutions and postal ATMs were started as part of an initiative to
provide banking services at post offices.
Net banking and mobile banking will be the next step towards reinventing
the postal services according to the changing trend. The department has also
announced a competition for logo design and tagline for the proposed IPPB. The
tagline should not exceed eight words either in English or Hindi and the best
entries will be awarded with a cash prize of Rs.25,000. The last date of
submission is July 31.
Courtesy: The Hindu