APN News

How Micro ATM is helping women of rural India

By: Rashid Ali, Managing Director and Technology Head at Ezeepay

Digital Bharat is the future of India, with everything going digital in the Covid-19 era has played an indigenous role. The pandemic has prompted a flood in the espousal of money withdrawals through Aadhar-enabled Payment Systems (AePS), superseding the deep-rooted reliance on conventional teller machines. Transactions powered through AePS, which falls under the broader category of micro-ATMs, have doubled whereas, the traditional transaction model has suffered a setback and halved in just one year.

For the financial inclusion of the underbanked areas of the country, the micro-ATMs have been quite a precedence. Costly ATMs, which are unviable to run, apart from low penetration, had paved the path for the proliferation of low cost-effective digital frameworks. The need for micro-ATM entrance in all towns is to cater their financial services to the high-cash economy of rural India. With merely under one-fourth of the 2.3 lakh ATMs conveyed in provincial regions of the nation, rural account holders are becoming progressively complacent with the financial services rendered by their neighborhood bank agents and the local Kirana shop that lower down to micro-ATM points.

Micro ATM, apart from being low budget to set up and easy to operate, provides an extra income to the merchants. Various banks and fintech companies are onboarding the local Kirana alas, chemists, grocery stores, etc in addition to their local bank or fintech agents. The fintech micro-ATM companies with a vision to increase women’s livelihoods translates into more dynamic spaces for ladies are partnering with the various women empowerment programmers. The outcome of such programs missioned for rural women empowerment has the micro-ATM companies preparing them to organize into self-help groups. These trained women eventually help the local communities access basic financial services where no brick and motor banks exist. These women serve as micro-ATMs to ease the lives of the rural people during the pandemic too. With restrictions on the mobility of people, micro-ATMs have proved to be the saviour. It enables the rural bank customers with withdrawal and deposition of cash, allows interoperation transactions validated by biometric authentication.

Every transaction additionally creates a commission for the self-help group ladies, who get a monthly commission for their services rendered. Such drives enable the remote local area to access money, assist them with buying and producing goods and create extra income for themselves.

Exit mobile version