In an ambitious move the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) aims to make rural India do cashless transactions by providing what is known as Point-of-Sale devices in all villages having a population of more than 10 thousand.
This will cover one lakh villages of Tier 5 and 6 areas having a population of upto 10,000. Nabard would install two such devices abbreviated to POS in each village, read a statement issued by the Bank.
The effort is going to cost NABARD an estimated Rs 120 crore, the bank said in a statement to the media. The move is aimed at taking rural India closer towards cashless payment systems, Nabard said in a statement.
Further, to encourage the adoption of new generation secure technology among farmers who are already on Rupay KCC (Kisan Credit Card) platform, Nabard said it will now support the procurement of EMV chip and PIN-based RuPay Kisan Cards by both regional rural banks and rural cooperative banks.
Nabard will spend approximately Rs. 108 crore towards this end. It will cover around 4.32 crore KCC holders.
Harsh Kumar Bhanwala, Chairman, said, “Demonetisation has posed a huge challenge to the cash-based transactions of rural economy and there is a pressing need to move towards digital transactions. At Nabard, we believe that these two initiatives will have a positive impact in easing the situation.