Pallavan Grama Bank, Regional Rural Bank (RRB) sponsored by Indian Bank, has launched a pilot project on mobile-enabled Kisan Credit Card aimed at the farming community.

This pilot project is funded by Nabard (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development).

This project with a Rs 44.66 lakh grant assistance from Nabard taken up in Villupuram district, Tamil Nadu, aims at facilitating a paperless, doorstep banking transactions by farmers, who can use their mobile phones for various services such as purchase of farm inputs, cash withdrawal and deposit, said Mr T.M. Bhasin, Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Bank.

He added that so far 400 cards have been given out to farmers, and in the next two to three months the bank hopes to issue a total of 2,000 cards.

According to Mr Prakash Bakshi, Chairman, Nabard, the objective is to provide

paperless and at the same time reliable, secure and any-time banking facilities to farmers. “This will save a lot of time and labour for banks and farmers too,” he said.

The bank organised today a ‘sensitisation workshop' for bankers and farmers on the use of the card. Delivering his special address to the audience here, Dr K.C. Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India, said cashless transactions would lead to increased efficiency (among bankers). The key focus of this project is to reduce transaction costs as it was observed that farmers spend a lot of money and time on every transaction made at a bank.

“Taking this (mobile banking) as an opportunity, we are asking farmers to utilise this service. Every farmer must use the technology and come under the banking fold for doing transaction so that costs go down and there is efficiency in banking system too,” he said.

Responding to a question on when the national rollout of the project would take place, he said, “We reasonably feel, in the next five years, we will be able to link every farmer with a bank account.”

Mr G. Rangarajan, Chairman of Pallavan Grama Bank, introduced the Service Provider of the project, PayMate India, and explained the project concept.

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