RBI issues additional guidelines for Indian State and District Central Co-operative Banks (StCBs and DCCBs)

The number of Indians banking with State and District Central Co-operative Banks (StCBs and DCCBs)

is significant. To further enhance the customer services in (StCBs and DCCBs), RBI issued a 38 Page circular containing additional instructions to (StCBs and DCCBs)on other areas of customer service.

Through these additional instructions, the (StCBs and DCCBs) customers can be assured of same customer service levels as in Scheduled Commercial Banks.

The additional guidelines are comprehensive and cover the entire gamut of banking operations.

There are 370 + DCC spread over all over India. The highest number of DCCs is in Uttar Pradesh. The lowest numbers of DCCs are in Himachal Pradesh. The variation could be due the number of districts in each State. Higher the number of districts, higher is the DCC number.

This Banking model consists of a district central bank for each District in every state of India known with a name as a respective District Central Cooperative Bank. The members and their elected directors who represent a multitude of professional cooperative bodies like Milk Unions, Urban cooperatives, Rural cooperatives, agricultural and non agricultural cooperatives and various others, in turn would elect the bank’s President.

These banks are collectively represented by a State Apex Central Cooperative bank for each state and it acts as the ultimate bank and apex body for the DCCs under each state. It has been widely observed all over the country that the local politicians who hold the sway over the cooperatives get elected the president post of the DCC bank and a president post would mean nurturing for their future political ambitions.

The best such examples can be found in Maharashtra State.

Indian Post Office Bank Savings Account to be ready for DBT-AEPS by 01/10/2013

 

In the corridors of power, hectic parleys’ are going to ensure that the Savings Accounts of Indian Post Office are part of the DBT-AEPS platform.

The full roll out of DBT schemes in 51 Districts will be rolled out by 01/10/2013. With the grand success of DBTL, now the efforts have been doubled.

One of the main objectives of Project Arrow launched by Indian Post in 2008 is to adopt the CBS for its saving accounts. Infosys’s Finance is the chosen software for the CBS project.

Project Arrow’s Blue Book lays down in detail the detailed planning for change in Indian Post psyche.

As per data shared with Parliament, there were over 26 crore operational small savings accounts in post offices as on March 31, 2012, having deposits worth Rs.1.9 lakh crore

“Government has initiated an ambitious IT driven project to modernize the postal network at a cost of Rs. 4,909 crore. Post offices will become part of the core banking solution and offer real time banking services. I propose to provide Rs. 32 crore for the project in 2013-14,” said the FM in his recent budget speech

Whether Indian Post will get a full fledged banking license is not yet sure.  The Department of Posts will move a Cabinet note in order to apply for a banking licence by the stipulated deadline of July 1, 2013.

 

The UPA government intends to put the world’s biggest job guarantee programme – MGNREGA – on its “game-changer” money transfer platform – the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) from this October.

This is possible only if  the government agencies are able to provide unique identification or Aadhaar numbers to entire population in 51 districts, where the government intends to put MGNREGA under DBT mode, and the banks and posts offices come on Aadhaar payment bridge.

The Prime Minister’s Office, which is directly monitoring the DBT, has asked Nandan Nilekani led unique identification authority of India (UIDAI) to speed up Aadhaar enrollment in these 51 districts and ensure that the entire population is covered by July.

At the same time, directions have also been issued to the postal department for entire computerisation of the post offices and connect them with a secured internet line. Multiple teams are working to enable the Indian postal department to implement its new Aadhaar enabled information technology solutions to help its integration with the DBT.

 

Six post offices of Nagpur region are among the 124 offices in the country where India Post will be first implementing core banking solutions (CBS).

In the pilot phase, eight postal circles have been selected. They include Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

There are also plans to introduce ATMs, about 1000 of them, in all HOs

Related articles

• Direct transfer of LPG subsidy begins in 18 districts (news.in.msn.com)
• More than 1 lakh families get LPG subsidy through DBT (ibnlive.in.com)

Mitek Mobile Photo Bill Pay – A new way for USA customers to pay their Utility Bills online

 

There is no doubt that the Online Bills Payment market is booming and every month, the number of bills paid via the online mode is on the increase. What is true for India is also true for USA.

Every time, I read about a new ePayment product launch in other parts of the world, my immediate thoughts, is when and who will launch it in India.

In India, the Online Bill-pay market is at a very nascent stage. One of RBI Payments Vision Document thrust area is on the development of a robust Online Bill-pay system for India.

The Online Bill-pay ecosystem comprises the respective utility service providers, IT companies, financial institutions and customers.

Benefits for the various players to invest in a robust Online Bill-pay ecosystem.

Utility Service Providers: a) Quick TAT b) Reduced transaction cost

IT Companies: a) New Product stream. b) Continuous AMC stream.

Financial Institutions: a) Good avenue for low-cost deposits b) Additional marketing tool.

Customers: a) Bills can be paid on the go. b) Minimal chances for delayed bill payments.

The main reason for customers hesitant to migrate to the Online Bill-pay is the pain of adding a new beneficiary in their Online banking module. As the number of bills to be paid every month increase, this becomes a major stumbling block, if the customers desire to migrate to a new Banking institution.

The customers prefer the ‘Push mode’, to the billers’ accounts rather than ‘pull mode’, from their banking accounts by the billers. This is because majority of the customers are not confident of the ‘pull mode’.

Hence, in case an easy and safe method is made known to the customers, they would be willing to migrate to online bill-pay mode.

One new product, which is to hit the USA market by 2012year end, is the ‘Mitek Mobile Photo Bill Pay’.

The Product was unveiled in Finovate 2011, and now the product is ready for a commercial launch. Mitek is in talks with several banks for a pilot launch, but the first partners’ name is still under wraps.

 

The product features in brief are as under:

01) A Smartphone is a necessity.

02)Customers take a photo of the bill with their smartphone.

03)The Mitek software starts recording the bill and populates the necessary fields for a successful bill payment.

04)The billing data is cross-verified with the billers’ data and any ‘curing’, is done. This happens as real time incoming data is synchronized with databases of billers.

05)Hence the success rate is as high as 90%.

06)Transactions conclude with verification that the users’ bills have been paid and electronic payments have been sent from their financial institutions.

 

Some key attributes of ‘Mitek Mobile Photo Bill Pay’ :

a)    The smart-phone App eliminates the hassle of users setting up information for individual payee accounts because Mitek technology extracts the data from the photo image and automatically provides it to the financial institution’s bill-processing system in the required format;

b)   Users need to photograph their bills only once and payee information is automatically saved in the application’s vendor list for future use;

c)    The app is template free, which provides a superior customer experience for the user and low cost of ownership for the bank thanks to Mitek’s dynamic data-capture capabilities.

The whole process i.e  all customer communication, image processing and data extraction is completely encapsulated and secure.

 

Re-disseminated by Prashant N. Banker by daytime, Blogger by night

Tatkal – Indian Rail Ticket Booking – Static IP or Dynamic IP ?

By now, the readers must be aware, that in the last few days, the rules for Rail Tatkal Booking have been changed a lot. CnnIbn has played a major role in the introduction of the new rules.

Traveler friendly measures have been introduced for both Physical booking as well as online booking.

3 major changes have been made for the Net booking mode. 2 changes are front-end changes, while the third one is a back-end change.

Front end change: –

Individual users are permitted to book only two tickets from 10 am to 12 noon. Only two tickets can be booked from one IP address between this time.

Capthca technology has been installed to prevent automated software from cornering tatkal tickets by fraudulent means.

Back-end change: –

To serve the increasing web traffic, railways has installed high capacity database servers and increased the Internet bandwidth from 344 MBPS to 450 MBPS.

Static IP and Dynamic IP modes. Majority of the net users are tech savvy, and may be aware of the two types of IP’s i.e Static and Dynamic.

The basic difference between Static IP Address and Dynamic IP Address, is than in Static IP, the IP address never changes, but in Dynamic IP, the IP address keeps changing.

If the Net booking User has a dynamic IP facility, how will the railways site implement the 2 tickets per IP is not yet clear. However, I am sure, in the coming days, Railways Team will find out a way, to deals with Dynamic IP issues.

If your orgnaisation has a Static IP Address model, when users access the Internet, than only the first two users from the organisaiton can book Tatkal railway tickets. Or, ‘The early bird gets the worm’.

In a Dynamic IP mode, ‘all the birds get the worms’.

The users can experiment with Tatkal Booking via Mobiles, as Mobiles have the Dynamic IP mode as default.

As a Safe ePayments Motivator, I would encourage travellers to opt for the Online mode rather than the Physical mode.