Banks deploy 120k business correspondents for PMJDY

Banks have deployed about 120,000 business correspondent agents/bank mitras (BCAs/BMs) to provide banking services to unbanked households of the country under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY).

In the urban and rural areas where opening of a brick and mortar branch or ATM is not viable, banks have engaged BCAs/ BMs for providing banking services, an official statement said. As many as "1,23,308 BCAs/BMs have been deployed by the banks for attaining the goal under PMJDY financial inclusion programme. They work on online real time mode using various types of telecom connectivity," it added.

During the week ended September 9, as many as 79,305 BCAs/ BMs did cash transactions (both deposit and payment), 34,205 did remittances and a total 12 million transactions were done by them. During the quarter ended June 30, total number of transactions done by BCAs/BMs were 67.8 million, of which 53.2 million were cash transactions and 14.5 million were remittance transactions, it added.

The outlets of BCAs/BMs in both rural and urban areas are fully equipped with the infrastructure required for delivery of banking services like account opening, cash deposit, withdrawal, fund transfer, among others. They also provide insurance and pension related services, it said, adding that these services are delivered through biometric authentication.