Five villages will become the first in the Indian state of Tripura to be covered under a biometric card initiative by Tripura State Cooperative Bank, an official from the Agartala-based bank tells PaymentsSource.
“Over 2,000 workers of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme in Tripura will be using biometric smart cards to avail banking facilities,” he says. “These workers are located in the five villages around the town of Dharmanagar.”
Agartala-based Ujjyanta Technology is providing the technology, which uses fingerprint authentication, according to the official. “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 official adds.
Tripura State Cooperative will deploy small, mobile readers consumers may use to authenticate themselves using their fingerprints so they may access their accounts and cash, according to the official. The bank “will extend biometric card service for all rural areas in Tripura if the feedback is satisfactory,” he adds.
