Budget 2022: Post offices to be brought on banking platforms

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, today talked about the need to bring about financial inclusivity for the people of India. In the country especially in rural areas, a large magnitude of people still uses post office for saving investment purposes and also to send a money order. The lack of infrastructure made it very difficult to transfer money across post offices.  In her speech, she mentioned that during 2022-23 100per cent of the 1.5 lakh post offices will come on the core banking system. This will especially help the population to seamlessly transfer funds. This will give access to accounts through net banking, mobile banking, ATMs, and also provide online transfer of funds between post office accounts and bank accounts. This will be helpful especially for farmers and senior citizens in rural areas, enabling interoperability, and financial inclusion for all. The minister was quoted saying that this will give a big impetus to farmers as now they will be able to get the direct benefit of government schemes. Currently, post offices provide savings account services and payments bank services through the India Post Payments Bank. By bringing the post office on the core banking platform, seamless transfer of money across bank and post offices will be a possibility thereby leading to financial inclusivity.