The Uttar Pradesh State Rural Livelihood Mission (UPSRLM) has engaged Manipal Technologies Limited (MTL) to train and onboard 8,000 women from self-help groups (SHGs) as banking correspondent (BC) Sakhis.

A company statement said on Sunday that this project is part of UPSRLM’s mission to train and onboard around 58,000 rural women as BC Sakhis or banking agents across 75 districts of the state. Of the 58,000 BC Sakhis, 8,000 will be trained and onboarded by MTL.

MTL signed the agreement with the UP Government in the presence of Rajendra Pratap Singh, UP Minister for Rural Development, recently.

Quoting Rajesh Shet, Vice-President of MTL, it said: “Our secure and easy-to-use technology solution will now support the rural women in UP to deliver several banking services as well as demonstrate their entrepreneur skills to a larger society. BC Sakhis will be the change-agent to deploy the use of digital payments in rural India and offer several new services at the doorsteps”.

Rural livelihood mission initiative

Under this rural livelihood mission initiative, each BC Sakhi will receive financial support of ₹24,000 for the first six months. The BC Sakhi will be provided specific training along with an integrated PoS (point-of-sale) device, cash box, fake-currency detector device, etc. to deliver seamless banking services in her village. To maintain safety and hygiene during the current pandemic, a contactless iris scanner for customer authentication will also be provided, he said.

Shet told BusinessLine that MTL had branded its technology solution as ‘Sahi Pay’ where it has brought banking, payments and some value-added services such as ticketing, electricity bill payment, etc., together.

The Government’s initiative is a big step towards empowering local women to provide banking and other digital payment services in village panchayat so that villagers do not need to travel long distances to access basic banking and payment services, he added.

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