More than five lakh fair price shops across the country will be equipped with electronic point of sale (ePOS) machines and function as micro ATMs in two years, a move that will largely help address the issue of poor ATM networks in rural areas.
The department of financial services (DoFS) under the finance ministry sent out a circular to states on November 7 — a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes — urging them to facilitate fair price shops and public distribution shops to support financial inclusion by way of ePOS machines also doubling up as micro ATMs.
ePOS machines once made compatible to function as micro ATMs will enable people to withdraw money from their accounts against swiping of their debit cards (RuPay cards have been issued to 210 million Jan Dhan account holders), make deposits, do funds transfer, and obtain printouts of balance enquiries and mini-statements, all from fair price shops.
Already, almost 1.6 lakh fair price shops, out of a total of over 5.4 lakh, have been fitted with ePOS machines that enable shops to give out subsidised rations in an automated way through Aadhaar biometric authentication.
The remaining fair price shops are supposed to be fitted with ePOS machines by 2019, creating the biggest possible addition to micro ATM networks in the country.
In the current demonetisation exercise, the Centre had to ask banks to deploy micro ATMs in rural areas and ask banking correspondents (banking mitras under the direct benefit transfer scheme) to go door-to-door to help people withdraw cash.
As per the Centre’s advice to states, the ePOS devices shall have Aadhaar and card (chip + PIN) functionality to perform financial transactions and shall have the capability to perform Aadhaar enabled payments and all debit/credit cards, including RuPay card inter-operable transactions.
By Baishakhi Dutta
