Village digital booths launched to provide banking services

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Staff Reporter :
Providing an inclusive banking services to the rural community especially the marginal people, village digital booth is going to start its operation as a pilot project in this month. Targeting all the villages of Bangladesh about 90 thousand village digital booth will be established in next three years.
Through the village digital booth the rural people will able to open bank account, deposit money in their account, and withdraw their money from any bank account.
Additionally, services including receiving remittance, paying utility bills and withdrawing monetary payments from social safety net programme will also be available through the village digital booth.
Payment aggregator platform of a2i ‘Ekpay’ and Zaytoon Business Solutions will work together to deliver this new service across the country.
Part of this programme, a MoU was signed between a2i and Zaytun Business Solutions at Sonargaon Hotel in the capital on Tuesday. Project Director of a2i Dewan Muhammad Humayun Kabir, and Chairman of Zaytoon Business Solutions, Arfan Ali signed on behalf of the organisation.
According to information disclosed in the event that the village digital booths will be set up in rural areas. The residents will get various banking services from those booths.
 Booths will be managed by an entrepreneur, who will basically be the representative of the banks or financial institutions and will do all the transactions. Agent’s income depends on transactions like agent banking. Money can be withdrawn and deposited from these booths through mobile banking accounts as well as bank accounts. The service recipient will not receive any financial services through paper checks.
Digital medium such as a mobile application or debit or credit card are needed to avail the service. These transactions will be completed through EKYC technology.
Arfan Ali, Chairman of Zaytoon business solutions, said ”through the village digital booth all the banking services of public and private banks as well as financial institutions will be offered to support our customers living in rural areas. So far we have made contract with 35 banks and financial institutions. Gradually, we will provide loan facilities to our customer and they will avail those services at an affordable rate.”
The village digital booth is a new service model. After launching a pilot project in the 50 villages of Munshiganj on this January, gradually all the villages of Bangladesh will be covered by next three years, he added.
Representatives of various banks and financial institutions were present in the event.