Milk pourers in rural Gujarat benefit from access to banking services

FINO PayTech delivers NDDB payments at doorstep to 1 lakh milk pourers in the state

Ahmedabad, 28 May, 2014: FINO PayTech, India’s largest micro payments solutions provider, in association with Union Bank of India has financially empowered over 1 lakh milk pourers associated with National Dairy Development Board (NDDB)spread across 1724 villages in 6 districts of the state.

FINO offered a cost effective, safe, secure and transparent payments solution to NDDB that needs to pay milk pourers for their produce. In association with Union Bank of India, FINO not only opened bank accounts of these rural milk pourers but also facilitated wage payments at their door steps through its agents spread across these villages. Milk pourers get biometric smart cards to operate their bank accounts. They have to simply present the card to the agent, get their finger print scanned for biometric authentication and complete the payment transaction. It’s all over in a couple of minutes!

Earlier, to collect this payment, pourers need to travel to the bank located at quite a distance and at times at the expense of their daily wage. This caused a lot of inconvenience to villagers with added cost of travel. FINO PayTech’s payment solutions to NDDB and a network of 870 agents made lives easier for these milk pourers inBhavnagar, Junagarh, Porbandar, Jamnagar, Amreli and Surendranagar districts in Gujarat.

Elaborating on the advantages of the model, Ahish Ahuja, Vice President - FINO PayTech Limited said, “FINO PayTech renders this service to over 116,000 NDDB milk pourers spread across Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.The biometric smart card based payments mechanism through our agent network has benefited milk pourers immensely as it provided them convenience due to door step banking, savings on travel and most importantly not losing daily wages to collect their due from NDDB. It is worth noting that all the 1 lakh bank accounts are transacting which is an encouraging sign to offer more customized products for the rural customers. This also facilitates meaningful financial inclusion.”

With a huge number of rural areas still out of banking ambit, agriculture–based economic activity in these areas and migration from rural to urban areas provide immense scope for customized payment services through formal channels. Like NDDB, other state cooperatives could also benefit from technology enabled bank led micro payment solutions that provide access to banking services in rural areas.

About FINO PayTech

FINO PayTech is a pioneering product innovation company that introduced biometric smart card based technology that gave impetus to RBI’s financial inclusion efforts since 2006. FINO PayTech also operates the country’s largest business correspondent (BC) network. It has presence across 499 districts in 26 states, facilitating transactions of over 25 million customers through 33000 transaction points. FINO PayTech enables sourcing, acquiring and servicing of micro customers on behalf of financial institutions at their doorstep. The model is built to offer bouquet of products to clients and their customers at affordable prices across channels as compared to traditional infrastructure based delivery models. (www.finopaytech.com)