Government-Run India Post Payments Bank Now Has 2 Crore CustomersThe milestone was achieved in just two years of operation

Providing a major boost to central government's efforts in furthering financial inclusion in unbanked and underbanked areas, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for communications, electronics & IT, and law & justice, announced that India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) has crossed the milestone of achieving 2 crore customers.

IPPB, which was launched in September 2018, is a government-owned public sector bank operating under the department of posts, ministry of communications has claimed to have been maintaining a run rate of 33 lakh accounts per quarter.

According to an official statement, IPPB had reached the milestone of 1 crore users in August 2019. The additional 1 crore customers have been on-boarded in just five months.

"The success of IPPB's business model underlines the government's intent in creating an interoperable banking infrastructure for the public good contributing toward changing the financial inclusion landscape in India," Prasad said in the statement.

The Union minister also revealed that IPPB has enabled more than 1.36 lakh post offices and 1.9 lakhdakiyas(postmen) since its inception to provide a complete suite of banking services at the doorstep. IPPB's efforts has now led to an increase in rural banking infrastructure by almost 2.5 times.

Providing Services To Underbanked Areas

IPPB has been set up by the central government with the vision to build the most accessible, affordable and trusted bank for the common man in India. According to the bank, its fundamental mandate is to remove barriers for the unbanked and underbanked regions and reach the last mile leveraging the postal network comprising 155,000 post offices ( including 135,000 in rural areas) and 300,000 postal employees.

According to the public bank, IPPB's reach and its operating model is built on the key pillars, i.e. enabling paperless, cashless and presence-less banking in a simple and secure manner at the customers' doorstep through a CBS-integrated smartphone and biometric device.

In line with the vision of Digital India, IPPB leverages innovation and focuses on ease ofbankingfor the masses. Currently, it offers simple and affordable banking solutions through intuitive interfaces available in 13 languages.

In a bid to boost the adoption of digital banking services, IPPB also implemented a digital financial literacy programme by investing over 1 crore man hours in training and certifying more than 250,000 postal assistants, postmen and GDS as banking service providers.

The bank also claimed to have digitized all the post office counters through a simple QR Code to accept electronic payments and also enabled direct payments into various post office saving schemes and purchase of postal products.

IPPB also received a major boost with the launch of Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AePS) services in September 2019. With AePS services, anyone with a bank account linked to Aadhaar can perform basic banking services such as cash withdrawals and balance enquiry irrespective of the bank they hold their account with.