Axis Bank launched eKYC facility for rural banking

The facility, uses the Aadhar database, will enable a bank account to be opened within 24 hours as against 7-15 days taken in villages at present

Axis Bank today said it has started an eKYC (know your customer) facility for account openings by business correspondents in rural areas, and aims to open 1 lakh such accounts over the next three months to drive its financial inclusion programme.

The facility, which uses the Aadhar database, will enable a bank account to be opened within 24 hours as against the 7-15 days taken in villages at present, said a senior bank official.

"We will be opening 1 lakh such accounts in the next three months," retail banking president Rajiv Anand told PTI here.

He said a soft launch of the facility took place in the Adilabad district of Andhra on February 20 and the bank, which was also the first to launch the eKYC facility at its branches, will now ramp it up in other parts of the state initially and then in other states.

There is no change in the equipment and infrastructure which the BC carries, he said, adding the same handheld Micro- ATM machine will be used to collect a customer's fingerprints.

"All you need to open an account is the Aadhar number and the fingerprints. At the back-end, with the help of NPCI, our servers will verify the details with the Aadhar database and the account will be opened," he said.

Anand said potential benefits of the facility are immense as this will empower the customer to get associated benefits like transfers under the direct benefit transfer (DBT) directly.

The bank will initially be targeting beneficiaries of DBT and pensioners for the account openings, he said. The bank said 52 per cent of its 2,300 branches are in semi-urban, rural and unbanked areas at present.