‘Selfie account,’ one of the latest trends in digital banking that offers the comfort of opening fresh bank accounts using one’s mobile phone to furnish the basic KYC (Know Your Customer) norms with a selfie shot, is slowly catching up among the State’s rural community.
Kerala Gramin Bank (KGB), which claims to have the biggest rural network in Kerala with around 615 branches and 296 ATMs, is now leading the show with 2,147 active rural selfie accounts to its credit.
KGB chairman M.K. Ravikrishnan said the response to the service had been encouraging since its launch a year ago on an exclusive android app — DigiKGB — with Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) clearance.
“Till the first quarter of 2017, not less than 15,000 customers have downloaded the app, of which 2,147 persons have already activated the accounts,” he told The Hindu here on Friday.
Easy procedure
“Signing up is not strenuous as the app easily prompts the customers to complete everything within a few minutes by feeding the phone number, Aadhaar number, and a selfie click. Transactions up to ₹10,000 can be done using this simple enrolment gateway,” Mr. Ravikrishnan said.
He added that these selfie accounts could easily attain the status of a normal savings bank account on submission of the additional KYC details to the nearest branch.
KGB’s tablet banking too has made its presence felt in villages, where it employs the full-time support of 30 executives to assist prospective clients at their doorsteps.
Mr. Ravikrishnan said the tablet account could be opened by just scanning the fingerprint of the customer who had a valid Aadhaar number and it automatically detected and fed the customer information into the digital KYC form.
The main advantage was that people who did not have any technical quotient could directly experience the thrill of digital banking at the comfort of their homes, he said.
Tablet accounts
Figures available with the KGB showed that it had successfully opened 8,500 tablet accounts in Kerala with its priority for the rural communities. Now, transactions worth ₹3 crore were held a month through tablet accounts on an average.
Bank authorities hope that the digital advancements will help the Central and State governments to bring even remote villages under banking system.
