State-level Seminar on Mobile Banking organised by GIZ's Rural Financial Institutions Programme and NABARD

To give a focused impetus to usage in Regional Rural Banks and Cooperative Banking System of technology to enhance the outreach of extension of Financial Inclusion programme through the mobile banking platform, a day long state level seminar was organised in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in association with GIZ on June 30, 2014.

The highlight of the seminar was the presentations on various aspects of mobile banking by the senior officials of GIZ, National Payments Corporation of India, NABARD and five technology providers namely Eko, Oxigen, FINO, Airtel and Sub-K. It emerged in these presentations that the normal mobile money, as also mobile banking transactions including opening of account and financial remittances were possible on low cost mobile also and the necessity for smart mobile phone was no longer a must, thanks to the technology development. Moreover, with corporate arrangement with business correspondents or the service points of technology providers in rural areas it was possible to deposit or withdraw cash as well at any point of time and at any place. This would turn out to be a big technology boost to the efforts of financial inclusion in far flung areas where internet connectivity was a problem but mobile connectivity was available. The participants were also guided on procedural aspects for adoption of mobile banking as also the regulatory prerequisites.

The seminar was graced by Smt Supriya Pattnaik, Regional Director, RBI, Lucknow ; Shri S S Yadav, Special Secretary, Department of Institutional Finance, Govt. of UP; Shri Nirmesh Kumar, General Manager, Bank of Baroda and State level Bankers Committee Convener; Shri A Srivastava, General Manager Allahabad Bank and Shri K K Gupta, CGM, NABARD, UP regional Office. Senior executives of the commercial banks, regional rural banks, District Central cooperative banks also participated in the seminar. A display of various technological solutions available for mobile banking was arranged at the seminar.