The Hindu Business Line : Biometric card for remote rural areas

Ahmedabad, May 19 State Bank of Indore has launched India’s first IT-enabled biometric card for potential customers in far-flung areas, to expand its customer base and extend its banking services to remote areas where no such services are currently available.

It’s also for the first time that a bank has planned to reach out to illiterate or semi-literate villagers who have so far remained outside the pale of banking services.

As a pilot project, the bank has planned to provide these cards in the next two months to nearly 35,000 members of families in two blocks of Vidisha district in Madhya Pradesh — Nateran and Shamshabad. After monitoring its success, the project would be extended to other areas as well.

Thumb impression

The biometric card would be used as an identification card for the beneficiaries to avail themselves of banking services. The card will carry the member’s thumb impression to identify the account holder and enable him/her get agricultural loans and other services, the bank sources said here on Monday.

A Mumbai-based NGO, Zero Mass Foundation, on behalf of the bank, would reach out to the potential customers in collaboration with an IT company, A Little World, which is providing software and other technical support for making these cards.

The Madhya Pradesh Finance Minister, Mr Raghavji, distributed 11 biometric cards to the first batch of beneficiaries at Shamshabad in his home district of Vidisha recently. He said the bank’s business was now equal to that of the budget of Madhya Pradesh.

Profits up

Presiding over the function, the bank’s Managing Director, Mr Pradeep Shankar, said that the bank’s business has touched Rs 43,000 crore in 2007-08 and it earned a net profit of Rs 234.01 crore, registering a growth of 23.19 per cent.

Out of the bank’s 459 branches, 349 are in Madhya Pradesh and 79 per cent of the bank’s total agriculture advances are shared by Madhya Pradesh only.

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