Digital Inclusion: The Need of The Hour

Way back in 1955, All India Rural Credit Survey Committee recommended availability of institutional credit to the unbanked people in the country. The outcome was State Bank of India. We are in 2015. Much water has flown under the bridge since, yet there is a gap in availability of  banking services to the masses in towns, villages and in remote habitats. Financial inclusion (FI) as a concept is retelling the story. This time around with technology backbone, it is bound to suceed.  

In this context, FISs initiative is to be lauded. The government has already given the necessary fillip offering the scope and objective for FIS. The first is releasing the licenses for Payments bank; soon to follow will be 'Small Banks'. The business model is oriented towards, what is referred to as 'Banking Correspondents' (BC) and 'Digital channels' (DC). BCs are individuals carrying banking services to the doorstep of the customers. They carry a convenient handheld device. The transactions are made using the device that stores infomation and a customer is authenticated by biometric as one factor. That in itself is disruptive of the current brick and mortar structure. It is very well known a large population find it intimidating to walk into a bank branch for several reasons. If India will have to extend banking services FI is the only avenue . 

FIS has to fast track this initiative to be relevant. Lest they miss the bus. They have and will continue to have competition, more on pricing, robustness of devices and the bandwidth that the devices will require to operate remotely. Given that FIS has a corebanking product that can be offered on cloud, this in conjunction with FI will be the exact answer for banking outreach. If this succeeds, there will be no stopping FIS in India.