Five villages will become the first in the Indian state of Tripura to be covered under a biometric banking card initiative overseen by Tripura State Cooperative Bank, a spokesperson for the Agartala-based bank tells PaymentsSource.
The cards will enable consumers to authenticate themselves using their fingerprints. “Over 2,000 workers of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme in Tripura will be using biometric smart cards to avail banking facilities,” the spokesperson says. “These workers are located in the five villages around the town of Dharmanagar.”
“The project is a spin-off of the Reserve Bank of India's Financial Inclusion project under which it has asked banks to reach out to people in the areas where it was difficult to maintain branches and ATMs,” the spokesperson adds.
The bank will deploy small, mobile cash machines where workers can use their biometric cards to access their accounts and withdraw funds. The bank “will extend biometric card service for all rural areas in Tripura if the feedback is satisfactory,” the spokesperson adds.
