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FINO to win non-banking community
Fifty per cent of the population is still are not utilising banking facilities and by introducing Financial-Information Network and Operations Ltd., (FINO) technology this gap could be breached.
Speaking to Daily News Business, Country Head ICICI Bank Sri Lanka, Prem Kumar Thampi said that the proper implementation of FINO technology to attract the rural masses could bring about a 99 per cent of population who would have the facility to access banking.
"Since Sri Lanka is a smaller country this target can be met in three years provided the regulators and banks take a lead role to promote it," he said. "We would be introducing this technology to Sri Lanka by the end of the year."
He said that FINO technology is a paperless banking system where an agent would visit unbanked rural and semi-urban community introduce banking. This system is being very successfully implemented in India and there are over 50,000 people getting into this system every month," he said.
He said the ICICI Bank was the first to tie with FINO and subsequently shared this technology with other banks. "We want to follow this same model in Sri Lanka and are inviting local banks to take this breakthrough technology and implement it," he said.
Vice President, Business Development FINO, Taun Agarwal who was in Colombo told Daily News Business that a SMART card would be given to these new customers and their fingerprints would be included in the card.
"The customers can also make deposits, withdrawals and they do not have to visit a bank or have a National Identity Card as the SMART card would do the authentication," he said. He said that unlike a normal ATM card the SMART card would have a transparent chip and it can also be used in any teller machine in Sri Lanka.
He also said that the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) has allowed the customer to do banking without visiting a bank and the new hand-carried battery operated POT terminal will make transactions even smaller.
He said that the cards that it provided to customers can also have other application information such as pensions, insurance and many more.
"Basically the card can maintain 15 different multiple applications and it is another unique feature of it," he said.