Below is an excerpt from a regular guest column that Bindu Ananth will be writing on the Forbes India Blog. Excerpt from the first post:
A recent Economist article says that 70% of Kenyans now use mobile money in some form. The battle against cash is an important one in the larger war against financial exclusion in India as well. Ease of payments makes a number of things easier – including for India’s large seasonal migrant population to send money home and also for a number of institutions such as banks and schools to operate in remote parts of the country.
The payment infrastructure in India consists of 80,000 bank branches, 150,000 post offices, 100,000 Business Correspondents, 88,000 ATMs and 600,000 POS machines. Simplistically, this is one payment point for every 1200 or so citizens. Add the rural-urban divide and the various regional disparities and this picture progressively looks worse.