The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : `Tiny' banking in Medak

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 12, 2007
ePaper

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Others

`Tiny' banking in Medak

J.B.S.Umanadh

EMPOWERED: Boddu Lakhsmi handling the customer service point of SBI Tiny banking in Togarpalli of Medak district.

Togarpalli (Medak): When the State Bank of India chose Medak for its pilot project on `Tiny' banking, Boddu Lakshmi was just a member of Sirimalle Dwacra group in Togarpalli of Kondapur mandal.

Being a literate, she was selected as an operator for the customer service point to be set up in the village. Never did she realise that the she would be the first tiny banker in the State.

During the past six months, Lakshmi had been successfully operating the transactions with the equipment provided by the bank. Her `Tiny' branch had more than 140 customers and another five hundred were in waiting list. She had deposits to the tune of Rs. 50,000.

Hi-tech banking

Despite of the simplicity in operation, the equipment Lakshmi uses is purely `hi-tech'. Each operator trained by the Mumbai based Zero Micro Finance and savings support foundation has been given a mobile phone that recognises the customer passbook that looks like any ATM card, biometric finger print recogniser, and a small printer. The customer once enrolled should not withdraw more than Rs. 10,000 but could deposit up to Rs. 50,000 on any given day.

Explaining her work, Lakshmi told The Hindu that all she had to do is to keep the card behind the mobile phone and after the card has been recognised, punch in the transaction.

A print is then generated for the satisfaction of the customer.

Lakshmi said that hundreds of villagers were ready to open accounts but she was waiting for the service providers to come and issue cards.

Project manager of Zero-Mass Vaidyanath Yerraguntla said that the aim of the bank was to open `Tiny banks' in all the 46 mandals of the district within this financial year.

Mr. Vaidyanath said that even though they had not charged anything for the equipment and cash chest, the service point operators had to pay it back at least in instalments.

Each operator gets a monthly remuneration of Rs. 2000 for the service.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh