Thursday, January 20, 2011

Now draw cash from kirana store

MUMBAI: Withdrawing cash from the neighbourhood kirana store has finally become a reality. ICICI Bank and ICICI Merchant Services—a company majority owned by US First Data Corporation—have started enabling cash withdrawal facilities among merchants that have their credit card swipe machines. 

Banks would need to make some minor changes in their systems to enable their debit card holders withdraw cash. ICICI Bank has already made these changes and its debit cardholders can start withdrawing cash from merchants who have been enrolled for cash withdrawals. 

The withdrawals will be subject to a daily limit of Rs 1,000 and will attract a charge of Rs 10 for every transaction. A portion of the charge will be shared between the banks and the merchant who pays out the cash. At present, only a handful of merchants have been enrolled into the scheme but the number is expect to grow sharply in coming months. 

“All of our 1.5 lakh merchants can become part of this. In future this cash-at-POS model could be used to drive other services like government annuity payment or remittance services ,” said Amrish Rau, country manager, First Data. “It will really pick up in areas where ATMs have not proliferated . Also, Reserve Bank of India guidelines allow merchants to act as business correspondents of banks and this could be used to promote financial inclusion,” he added. 

The facility is not intended to replace ATMs but to make available new channels closer to the customer. As against 75,000 ATMs in India, there are over 5 lakh point-of-sale terminals. This number is expected to double in a few years because of new entrants in the business. 

Source:- The Economics Times
              19 JAN, 2011

No comments:

Post a Comment