Oxigen makes strategic suggestions to drive financial inclusion under RBI Pilot Scheme
New Delhi, India, July 1, 2014: Oxigen Services India Pvt Ltd, established in 2004 is a key player in Financial Inclusion space by virtue of being a BC to two large banks and also the pioneer in developing a Mobile wallet platform. The launch of its domestic Money Transfer Service using NPCI connect has grown significantly since its launch just a year back to take leadership position and continues to grow month on month. The Company is presently undertaking an RBI initiated Pilot.
Chairman and Managing Director of Oxigen Services India Pramod Saxena revealed that Oxigen is presently undertaking an RBI initiated Pilot to demonstrate the technology and proof of concept for the working of Cash out infrastructure in deep rural in Orissa, Bihar and Eastern UP. Just two months into the pilot it has already established a network of rural retailer points using its GPRS Point of Sale terminal with biometric serving several villages in these states. Transactions which need to have Aadhaar linked-id for sender and receiver have started. Mr Saxena also reiterated that as of 2014 barely 250,000 villages out of 650,000 villages have banking services leaving the rest financially excluded. The task before the Banks and partners like Oxigen is gigantic.
There is a definte need for the Government to be more proactive in introducing measures to give an impetus to this task. He urged that this work be treated at par with Infrastructure industry as what we are doing is creating infrastructure for a rural payment ecosystem. The incentives should be extended to this industry as it requires a huge investment not only in hardware but soft investment in financial Literacy, customer education, training and retail support. Currently service tax exemption exists for Business Correspondence services in rural areas. This should be extended to all kinds of electronic payments systems. Apart from that by awarding infrastructure status to payment industry, it should qualify for priority sector lending.
Financial Inclusion is a subject that is engaging the attention not only in India but globally. Its importance in the development of India’s economic growth is well recognised.
