Plans afoot to make all co-op societies cashless
PANAJI
Aiming at bringing all co-operative societies under the digital platform, Goa State Co-operative Bank (GSCB) is exploring the possibility of providing their customers with the SIMsePAY through which banking transactions can be carried out without using the smartphone or even internet.
For this, GSCB has partnered with one of India’s largest private sector players -- Yes Bank. Presently, the customer reach of co-operative societies in Goa is over 5 lakh. GSCB plans to launch the technology by mid-December on a pilot basis.
The SIMsePAY or the SIM sleeve technology as it is called, is thin sticker which needs to be pasted on any SIM card which comes in sizes like nano, micro and standard. The sticker installs a SIM Tool Kit (STK) based app which can be used on any phone and also without the internet. Any customer willing to adopt the technology will have to bear a one-time cost of Rs 200 for the SIM sleeve sticker which has a shelf life of 5 to 8 years.
Speaking about SIMsePAY, Sanjeev Pandey of Yes Bank said, “This is a sticker which has to be pasted on a SIM of the mobile phone. The sticker basically drives the application in the menu of the phone and it works on the feature as well as smartphone. Additionally, it works in all formats without the internet. It uses the GPRS services, the SMS gateway to drive the messaging flow to the IMPS gateway and through the IMPS gateway the transaction is pushed to the beneficiary account.”
Explaining about the services which they propose to launch, he said, “The services mainly would include all the features which any mobile banking application has like - Person to Person (P2P) fund transfers, Person to Account (P2A) fund transfers using NEFT and IMPS, among others. We are also using the bill payment gateway for transfers to the billers which are on the national grid at this moment. Furthermore, the SIMsePAY also has the capability of adding up even localised biller. This will actually add a lot of transformation in terms of adoption of digital payments at the local markets and will further strengthen the customer base.”
The technology is patented by TAISYS - a Taiwan based company with which Yes Bank has partnered to bring it in India.
Meanwhile, gearing up for making all its affiliated co-operative societies cashless, GSCB on Friday held a meeting with representatives of nearly 300 co-operative societies. The meeting resolved to form a core committee comprising of the representatives of these societies which is expected to chalk out a detailed plan for making the co-operative societies cashless in a phased manner.
GSCB Chairman Ulhas Phaldesai said, “The GSCB already has over three lakh customers and considering the number of co-operative societies, the number would be much higher. Additionally, we have requested all the co-operative societies for actual details on how many of their customers would be willing to take these cards. We are trying to create a second base of the co-operative societies. This co-branded app and a debit card would be provided to them through which they will be able to carry out their transactions.”
