With a view to extending banking services to the rural population, India Post Payments Banks (IPPBs) are going to be opened across the country on Saturday by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In the same series, IPPBs would be opened by Department of Posts (DoP) in all the 27 districts headquarters of the State, while 3464 service centres in rural areas would be linked to them thereafter.

This was informed by Director, Postal Services, Chhattisgarh Circle, M B Gajbhiye in a press conference  here on Thursday.

A total of 650 IPPBs would be opened on Saturday which would be online and connected with service centres situated in villages, he said.

Asserting that the motive of starting the services was to provide banking services to rural populace, Gajbhiye informed that all the 1.55 lakh post offices in the country would be linked to the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) system by December 31, 2018.

A total of 3464 micro ATMs would be established for transactions in the State, Gajbhiye informed.

The account holders in the payments bank would be provided a QR card and they can authorize transactions with the card and their biometrics, he added.

More important is that we are going to provide ‘Door Step Service’ in which the postal employee would approach the customers to provide the services, Gajbhiye said.

The bank would provide services such as current account, savings account, remittances, money transfer, direct benefit transfer, enterprise and merchant payment, he informed, adding that the services would be available through multiple channels including counter services, micro ATM, mobile banking applications, SMS and IVR (Interactive Voice Response).

"On the day of the launch, IPPB would have 650 branches and 3,250 access points spread across the country," Gajbhiye said.

By the end of 2018, the number of access points would increase to 1.55 lakh, of which 1.30 lakh branches would be in rural areas, he added.

Apart from it, the account holders of the Post Office Savings Bank would also be able to avail IPPB services by linking their accounts, the official added.

“We are also committed to extending our services to left Wing Extremist (lWE) affected areas in the state with plans to open 755 post offices”, he added.