HDFC Bank has come up with a new feature that will be rolled out across India. The roll out of the handheld machines that will work similar to ATMs is meant for the customers of the bank in the rural regions of the country where the set up of full-fledged ATM kiosks is commercially unviable. These customers can carry out the banking transactions from these machines.
Introduced within a year, around 1,550 such micro ATMs have been set up by HDFC Bank. From these micro ATMs, the bank is seeing transactions that are aggregating to about Rs 1 crore every month in the rural areas. In the future, these machines can be used in the rural areas to send the payment to the pensioners and direct benefit transfers under MGNREGA. In the urban areas, these units are expected to ease the pressure faced by the bank officers in the branches that have a lot of customers, stated Vikas Pandey, the Head of Strategic Projects at HDFC Bank.
These micro ATMs are similar to the swipe machines that are used for the credit and debut card payments at shops, malls, restaurants and other merchant establishments. The micro ATMs are competent of biometric certifications using the Aadhaar card.
Regarding this, the bank official stated that after an Aadhaar number is fed to the machine, and the biometric verification is done for the specific Aadhaar number, it will b connected to the UIDAI server that will instantaneously verify and give the results for the KYC.
Apart from the e-KYC, the micro ATM units will also provide facilities such as account statement, cash deposit and withdrawal, disbursement of the pre-approved loans and many other banking transactions. For instance, in some villages in the state of Punjab, the customers of HDFC Bank are informed to arrive at a specific location such as the gurdwara of the locality at a specified time in order to carry out the desired banking transactions on these micro ATMs.
Now, HDFC is in the process of incorporating the pension payments for the government of Tamil Nadu that will be done using the biometric verification for additional security.
