The Financial Express (Delhi Edition)
Bandhan’s ‘ human teller machines’ to bring bank to doorstep
Kolkata, June 19: Come August, you can deposit or withdraw money from your account while sitting at home, thanks to Bandhan’s ‘human teller machines’. The bank-to-be will use its time-tested hand-held point-of-sale devices for taking deposits from doorstep of its customers, who can also withdraw money from their account.
Microfinance major Bandhan Financial Services will start its banking operations from August 23. It is currently using the handheld devices for collecting credit instalments from microfinance customers. Bandhan said transactions through this device would be cost-effective even in the metros as they would still be cheaper than ATMs.
“We will be the first banker to give this doorstep HTM service in urban areas and metros,” Bandhan Financial Services CMD Chandra Shekhar Ghosh told FE.
“We have bought 14,000 machines and, of them, around 12,000 are already in the field,” Ghosh said. He said this model would help the upcoming bank in deposit mobilisation.
Asked how the system will operate, he said, “Employees of our bank will be present at customers’ residences at a particular time with the HTMs every week. Customers can make required transactions during this time.”
The bank will tap potential customers from the lowincome group in the metros as well as urban areas.
Initially, it will depend on its existing 66 lakh customers across the country for deposit mobilisation. Of the total customers, 30% are in metro and urban areas.
According to Ghosh, raising deposits from rural and semi-urban areas would not be a problem for the bank as it would then utilise the existing microfinance channel for that purpose, along with the bank branches. Out of around 600 bank branches, 200 will be in urban areas and the rest will be in semi-urban and rural areas.
“We will knock (at) our customers’ (doors) every week for depositing a portion of their savings. We will try to develop the habit of savings in our customers in rural areas,” Ghosh said. He said the bank will focus on the unbanked rural population and micro and small enterprises to grow business.