Comments
Priyanka Pani
At a time when consumers are complaining of cash-crunch at ATMs in certain regions, Mumbai-based payments bank Fino Payment Bank is using its domestic remittance business, merchant points and doorstep banking to ensure that cash is available in the interior parts of the country.
Several States such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and some parts of Maharashtra faced cash shortage when ATMs in these geographies went dry last month.
Mumbai-based payments bank Fino is using the cash generated through its domestic remittance business to mitigate the solution in several semi-urban and rural areas.
Rural presence
Fino, with its network of branches and merchant points, including Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) outlets, has a predominant presence in the rural areas of UP, Bihar, MP and Maharashtra and in over 110 urban locations that are remittance corridors.
Rishi Gupta, MD and CEO of Fino Payment Bank, told BusinessLine that the bank’s domestic remittance business has more than tripled since its launch in July 2017 by facilitating remittance of over ₹1,150 crore a month, thus generating cash across its transaction points. Besides, the bank is also tapping its strategic partner and investor BPCL’s retail outlets that are cash surplus to neutralise the situation.
“We aim at neutralising cash in and cash out at the branch/merchant points in the local economy by using cash generated through the remittance business to tackle the cash crunch. Having said that, availability of cash in rural areas has always been a challenge; it has only grown in scale of late, and we have been able to address this issue through our outlets and doorstep banking services,” Gupta added.
Micro-ATMs with Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) are also playing a big role in facilitating cash withdrawals not only for Fino’s customers but also for other bank account-holders. Gupta claims that the combined value of withdrawal transactions from these devices has grown by over 450 per cent from January 2018 to April 2018.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.