When Ganesh Satghare starts his bike at 9-30 in the morning, Jungad village knows its ‘bank’ is open and ‘running’.

The 28-year-old graduate is armed with a micro-ATM and macro patience. For, his work is far from easy.

As a business correspondent of a nationalised bank, he faces many a problem every day as he helps villagers with simple banking transactions such as opening accounts and withdrawing/depositing money — computer snags, limit on withdrawals and lack of customer trust not to speak of the vagaries of weather and infrastructure such as it is in the interiors of Maharashtra’s Wardha district.

Ganesh took the job as it was better paying than any other work available in the district. He quit from an NGO last December to move to the bank.

Hired on contract basis by the bank, Ganesh covers three villages assigned to him. He visits a village a day, and says normally puts through “10-12 transactions”.

The micro-ATM that Ganesh carries looks swank but only as fast as the Internet connectivity, which in the hinterland is poor. It takes him an average of three minutes to complete a transaction.

Once the 12-digit Aadhar number of the customer is keyed in, the customer has to place his finger on the small panel of the hand-held machine for authentication. “Sometimes the bio-metric authentication does not come through,” says Ganesh.

Fixed pay

Banks, generally, hire BCs from areas where they want to provide the service.

Typically, a BC gets a fixed salary of around Rs 3,000, and a travel allowance of Rs 500 a month.

According to Ganesh, a BC can earn up to Rs 4,500 if he generates business for the bank. And if he is able to convince customers to keep long-term deposits, he earns a little more.

But the cap on the value of transactions usually limits a BC’s salary to Rs 3,500 a month. For Ganesh, and BCs like him, getting the trust of the villagers is the key.

“Villagers like to check out the BC model by withdrawing money first, as there is minimum risk in this,” says Ganesh. So, the majority of the transactions are for withdrawals.

But the amount that can be withdrawn is quite low. “If a customer in a village is looking to withdraw more than what is allowed, we cannot support him. He will have to go to the branch,” he says.

This limit also makes it difficult “for us to convince customers about deposits,” says Ganesh.

“The more they are able to withdraw via the BC, the more they will trust the BC with their deposits,” he says turning off the bike, and ‘closing’ the bank.

> satyanarayan.iyer@thehindu.co.in

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