BHUBANESWAR: With the Centre pushing for digital transactions after demonetisation, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) will launch a digital financial literacy and awareness drive in the state.
NABARD will conduct 1560 digital financial literacy and awareness programmes (dFLAP) in the state.
As cooperative banks are lagging behind commercial banks and regional rural banks (RRBs) in the field of technology adoption and use, thrust will be given to the customers of cooperative banks, Nabard
sources said.
The programme will focus purely on digital transactions for the customers of cooperative banks which are already live on the RuPay cards. NABARD funded FLC (financial literacy centre) counsellors of
cooperative banks will conduct these dFLAPs.
The trained FLC counsellors along with the bank's staff will organize one day dFLAP in the identified villages and the programme will be completed within 40-50 days.
The target audience of each dFLAP will be segmented into three categories - cooperative bank customers who possess RuPay card but do not use it, customers whose cards are lying undistributed with the
branches and customers who are yet to apply for cards.
The FLC counsellors will persuade the customers to apply for RuPay cards and explained the benefits of digital transaction and ease of using the card through demonstration.
The RuPay cards which remained undistributed will be collected from the banks branches and distributed amongst the beneficiaries. People who have not applied for RuPay cards will be advised to go for
it and if possible their application forms will be collected during this campaign, the sources added.
The state has 17 central cooperative banks (CCBs) with 355 branches in the districts. The district central cooperative banks (DCCBs) have a long way to go when it comes to offering digital services such
as Internet or mobile banking.
The DCCBs have been playing pivotal role in the state by dispensing about 65 percent of the crop loans through their affiliated Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) and catering to the requirement of around 44 lakh agricultural families under Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme.