Empowering Farmers with Mobile-enabled Kisan Card System

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

A mobile-enabled kisan card system to help the agricultural community engage in cashless transactions, especially with their input providers, was launched here on Sunday to benefit farmers in Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu by Pallavan Grama Bank.

K.C. Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India, who launched the pilot project, said there was nothing new about mobile banking. “But this is for the first time that a structured launch involving the farming community have been done.”

24×7 facility

This would not only bring down the transaction cost but also the time involved. And it would be a 24X7 facility.

This would be user-friendly, paperless and enable doorstep-banking transactions by farmers using their mobile handsets towards purchase of farm inputs.

He said this could be extended all over the country any time.

“The only issue is whether the farmers are accustomed to mobile banking. Besides not all the Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) are computerised. We are trying to popularise mobile banking on a large scale.”

Dr. Chakrabarty expressed hope that in the next five years if every farmer and every worker were to have a bank account, this mobile banking system would automatically become popular. Earlier he addressed a sensitisation meet for farmers and bankers in this regard.

Source: The Hindu (link opens in a new window)