Allahabad Bank To Launch Agri Card Today

The Allahabad Bank, which will launch Green Card _ its agricultural credit card today, is planning to disengage from its tie-up with Bank of India (BoI) for its general credit card, Indiacard.

The bank is also mulling the option of unifying the monitoring systems for the farm card and the credit card at some stage in the near future.

The bank's chairman Harbhajan Singh said yesterday that the bank was aiming to provide a major push to the credit card business, and therefore, would most probably team up with either Mastercard or Visa.

"Once that happens, we can enlist our own merchant establishments together with those of the global major", Singh said. He added that since March, the bank's credit card business had been growing with 10,200 active cards now from about 8,000 in March. The plan was to take the number to about a lakh, he added. The disengaging from the BoI tie-up and the launch of its own card is expected by the end of the current fiscal.

 

Singh will launch the new farm credit card from Kashipur, in Udham Singh Nagar district in Uttar Pradesh today. "The card would combine the features of agricultural finance with that of a credit card", he explained. The selling point of the card, Singh said, is the fact that the limit of the user would not be linked to the cost of his inputs, but to his production capacity and income. Towards that end, the bank has created slabs where the size of his holdings is related to his eligibility limit.

Besides, the card, apart from catering to production-related needs, would also service other domestic requirements like education, consumable items, medical expenses, etc. The bank has identified 23 districts from where the Green Card will be launched. The cards will also have three varieties _ Silver, Gold and Diamond card _ based on the credit limits of each. The silver card will have a limit of Rs 40,000, the Gold Card Rs 40,001 to Rs 60,000 and the Diamond Card Rs 60,001 to Rs 1 lakh, respectively. The card scheme has been drawn up after detailed discussions the bank had with the farmers. It is targeting about one lakh Green Cards over a period of time.

The target group of the card is progressive and literate farmers owning minimum irrigated land of 5 acres or equivalent and having a stable financial position and good banking habit. In case of existing borrowers, the track record of repayment will be examined from the conduct of the account.