NEW DELHI :The Public Investment Board has approved the Rs 800-crore proposal from India Post for setting up a payments bank and it will be placed before the Cabinet within a month for final approval.
PIB,
under the Finance Ministry, whets the investment proposals by state-run
entities.
"The
PIB meeting has been held on January 19 and the proposal has been approved. The
recommendations of PIB will now be placed before the Cabinet for final
approval," a senior official of Department of Post (DoP) told PTI.
The
department is also in the process of finalising selection of a consultant for
setting up of the India Post payments bank.
It
had shortlisted six consultants but only three of them submitted the bids.
The
India Post payments bank will primarily target unbanked and under-banked
customers in rural, semi-rural and remote areas, with a focus on providing
simple deposit products and money remittance services.
The
pilot for the payments bank is set to start from January 2017 and the
full-fledged operations may start by March.
As
many as 40 international financial conglomerates including World Bank and
Barclays have shown interest to partner the postal department for setting up
the bank.
The
Reserve Bank has granted payments bank permit to the department, which is
already into providing financial services and has 1.55 lakh branches across the
country.
As
per the RBI guidelines, a payments bank can offer limited services such as
demand deposits and remittances.
They
will not be allowed to undertake lending activities and will initially be
restricted to holding a maximum balance of Rs 1 lakh per individual customer.
They
will be allowed to issue ATM or debit cards as other prepaid payment
instruments but not credit cards.
Source
: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
