Telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday said India Post will launch its payments bank by March 2017. As many as 40 international financial conglomerates, including World Bank and Barclays, have shown interest to partner with postal department for the payments bank, Prasad said on the sidelines of an event on Good Governance.
He also announced that state-run MTNL, which offers services in Delhi and Mumbai, will offer free roaming services from January 1. This will allow 35,22,000 MTNL subscribers to receive calls at no extra cost while travelling across the country.
Prasad also announced many initiatives for digitisation of India Post to facilitate faster delivery of goods and services, a crucial link for its partnering in e-commerce business. Some big initiatives for India Post such as facilitating it with hand-held devices for electronic transactions which will help in booking and delivery of speed post, registered mail, money orders, sale of stamps and postal stationary through these devices were announced.
The minister handed over solar-powered, biometric hand-held devices to three branch postmasters and 1,30,000 such devices would be rolled-out by March 2017. At least l,57,000 integrated state-of-the-art parcel centres have been created for booking, processing and delivery of e-commerce parcels.
Savings bank deposits and withdrawals, other deposits and loan or claim payments will also be done electronically on these devices and will automatically be uploaded on the central server,” said the minister adding that 197 ATMs are already operating at post offices and many more will be installed.
The minister said post offices will act as a common service centres and offer services such as rail reservation, online bill payment for electricity and water, mobile and DTH recharge, insurance policy premium payments & transactions for partner banks, insurance companies, mutual funds and other services.
Resource :http://www.financialexpress.com/article/economy/india-post-to-launch-payments-bank-by-march-17-says-ravi-shankar-prasad/184749/
No comments:
Post a Comment