Fino Payments Bank to set up 20,000 ‘human ATMs’ in State

Fino Payments Bank is planning to reach out to a majority of the villages in the State by expanding its ‘human ATM’ network on a large scale.

The bank plans to set up 20,000 Fino Banking Points across the State by the end of the current fiscal, Fino Payments Bank (South) senior divisional head Biswajeet Sinha told the media during a video conference on Thursday. The Fino banking points provide entrepreneurship opportunities to the owners of kirana stores, mobile repair shops, dairy outlets and others as they act as 'human ATMs' and provide banking services to the customers, he said. “We are planning to have our presence felt in every village of the State which has over 17,000 panchayats,” he said.

In view of the pandemic, Fino has undertaken initiatives that proved beneficial for the rural masses with extensive banking equipped with micro ATMs and Aadhaar enabled payment system (AePS) devices, Mr. Sinha said. “We focus on three critical elements, including improvement of access by transforming the neighbourhood kirana, dairy and other shops into banking points, reaching close to the customers, and by providing banking services through which customers can pay EMIs without going to bank branches,” he said.

“Fino has provided job opportunity to over 2,100 neighbourhood shops and currently has a network of close to 10,000 merchant points (banking points) across the State including 450 outlets in partnership with Bharat Petroleum,” Mr. Sinha added.