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Professional Banker Magazine:
Branchless Banking in India: Banking Without Banks!
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One of the most important challenges faced by the Indian banks is to connect to the people especially to those in the rural Indian markets and fulfill their financial requirements. Many of the banks do not open branches in these areas because a minimum turnover is not guaranteed by doing so. The concept of `Branchless Banking' assumes prominence in this context. As the name suggests, this concept just means banking without physical bank branches.

 

The rapid development of Information Technology (IT) has led the customers to adopt online banking as it reduces the time and the cost associated with banking activities. Branchless banking (BB) extends services to all kind of people, both by reducing the cost of delivery (in terms of rent and maintenance of building of banks, and handling low value transactions directly) and by reducing the cost of accessing the services (traveling to banks and waiting in the queue which consumes a lot of time). The concept is thus an economic substitute to conventional branch-based banking. BB enables commercial banks to offer different services outside the traditional bank premises by different channels like business correspondents, retail agents, mobiles, Internet facilities, etc. BB thus aims to provide the financial services in the unbanked areas.

The word BB means "conduct of banking activities as outlined in the guidelines by Authorized Financial Institutions for customers having a branchless banking account."

BB account means "a current deposit account or a savings deposit account or any other account maintained by a customer in a financial institution in which credits and debits may be affected by virtue of Electronic Fund Transfers or Banker's Cheque."

 
 
 

Professional Banker Magazine, Information Technology, IT, Branchless Banking, BB, Rural Indian Markets, Regional Rural Banks, Cooperative Banks, Business Correspondents, BCs, National Dairy Development Board, Reserve Bank of India, RBI, Internet Banking, i-banking, Indian Financial Network, Structured Financial Messaging Solution, Advanced Encryption Technology, Magnetic Ink Character Recognizer Cheque Clearing, Electronic Fund Transfer, Negotiated Dealing System, Real-Time Gross Settlement System.