The Department of Posts will offer core banking solutions (CBS) to its customers at 25,000 post offices by April, against 20,494 CBS-enabled branches.
- CBS-enabled post offices allow customers to access their postal savings from any of the branches where the facility is available.
- Postal department’s digitisation is integral to Digital India.
- The core banking linkage of post offices is bigger than that of State Bank of India, which has 16,333 CBS-enabled branches.
- Implementation of CBS is part of the government’s plan for IT Modernisation Project of the Department of Posts, which aims to bring in various IT solutions with the required IT infrastructure to the post offices.
- In September 2015, the postal department received an in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank of India to set up a payments bank within 18 months.
Core Banking
- Core banking is a banking service provided by a group of networked bank branches where customers may access their bank account and perform basic transactions from any of the member branch offices.
- Core banking is often associated with retail banking and many banks treat the retail customers as their core banking customers.
- Businesses are usually managed via the Corporate banking division of the institution.
- Core banking covers basic depositing and lending of money.
- Normal Core Banking functions will include transaction accounts, loans, mortgages and payments.
- Banks make these services available across multiple channels like ATMs, Internet banking, mobile banking and branches.
- The core banking services rely heavily on computer and network technology to allow a bank to centralise its record keeping and allow access from any location.
