To all the Readers,
Starting this month, NPCI will be contributing a regular column in Your Bank’s monthly magazine titled “The Payment
Solutions Series”. It’s our endeavor to touch every Indian Citizen by 2020 with one or the other payment solutions of
NPCI. Through these series of articles, we would connect with the RRB staff and customers alike and share payment
industry updates, policy level developments, new announcements / schemes and interesting trivia and snippets related
to the payments industry. Tips, Dos and Don’ts in using different payment products are also on the agenda to be
covered in subsequent issues. The first in this series is the much talked about National Financial Inclusion Mission of
GOI, “Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana”
The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has announced a new financial inclusion plan “Jan Dhan Yojna", for India during
his first Independence Day speech on 15 August 2014. This is a scheme to financially empower the poor by providing
them – a bank account, credit facility, insurance cover and debit card. The programme was rolled out on August 28, 2014
by the Prime Minister to be implemented in a mission mode in two phases:
India has around 6 lakh villages—banking presence has expanded from 67,674 villages in March 2010 to 3, 83,304
villages as of March 2014. Under the previous financial inclusion plan, it took a massive effort from banks in the past
three years to reach the larger, unbanked villages, and the smaller, 4, 90,000 unbanked villages (with population less
than 2,000) were to be covered by 2016. Summary progress of all Banks including Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), during
three years period (2010-2013) are as under:
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Though significant progress has been achieved during the last five years in terms of widening the reach and access to
banking services, the December 2013 Nachiket Mor Committee report on financial services for small businesses and lowincome households estimated that 60% of India's population still doesn't have functional bank accounts. In terms of
numbers, nearly 7.5 crore households out of a total 25 crore still don't have any access to any form of financial services.
The Jan Dhan seeks to address these issues in mission mode
and has set an ambitious target of bringing in more than 7.5
crore un-banked families into India’s banking system by
opening more than 15 Crore bank accounts at the rate of two
bank accounts per household. Besides a basic banking
account, a Rupay debit card having inbuilt accident insurance
cover of ₹ 1 lakh will be provided to the account holder and a
life insurance cover of INR 30,000 (for accounts opened
before January 26, 2015).
Once the bank account has been active for 6 months, the
banks could even extend an overdraft of Rs 2,500/- to the
account-holder, which would further be enhanced by the bank
to Rs 5,000/- over time (subject to Bank’s approval). The long
term vision of the Jan Dhan Yojana is to lay the foundation of
a less-cash economy and is complementary to the Digital India
Scheme.
The plan differs from the earlier financial inclusion plan in a
way that the focus is now on each household and not on
village- level. Moreover, both rural and urban areas are being
covered this time as against only rural areas targeted earlier.
IMPORTANT FACTS OF “JAN DHAN YOJANA””
 The name “Jan dhan” was chosen through an
online compettion on the MyGov Platform and
eceived more than 6000 suggestion from Indian
citizens. After evaluation the jury shortlisted “Jan
Dhan” which was suggested by 7 individuals.
 The slogan for the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan
mission is “Mera Khata- Bhagya Vidhata”which
when translated into Englis means “My Bank
Account- The creator of the Good Fortune”
 The logo of the Mission is depicted below:
 The primary aim of the scheme is to bring
unbanked people into the banking system by
providing them bank accounts and debit cards.
 The scheme will cover both urban and rural areas
and all bank accounts opened will be linked to a
RuPay debit card.(RuPay is India’s own unique
domestic card network owned by National
Payments Corporation of India )
 Every individual who opens a bank account will be
eligible for RuPay Debit Card with inbuilt Rs 1 lakh
accident insurance cover and Rs. 30,000/- life
insurance for those opening bank accounts before
January 26th ,2015.
 The first phase of scheme is focused on opening of
savings bank account, issuing of
RuPay debit
cards with inbuilt accident insurance cover upto
Rs. one lakh, pension facility and extending loans
and overdraft facilities to new account holders.
Technology will also need to play an important part in the government’s financial inclusion plan. For providing fully
enabled bank accounts to the unbanked population, banks will have to ensure that every transaction is part of the core
banking solution. Till now, most of these transactions were offline and not connected to the bank’s core banking
network. It will also well address the issue of inactive accounts
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Further, convergence with UIDAI to enroll beneficiaries for Aadhar number during account opening could address the
issue of genuine and unique accounts which will help the government to pass on various subsidies to genuine
beneficiary.
E-KYC and Mobile wallet are another such initiatives which is being pushed by the government to bring in an all-inclusive
implementation plan.
National Payments Corporation of India with its robust state of the art payment systems networks is geared to support
all the Regional Rural Banks to participate in the PM Jan Dhan Yojana by enabling them on RuPay, NFS, IMPS/USSD, eKYC
and AEPS.
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