Role of technology in ensuring high success rate of financial inclusion in India Gupta Amit Research Fellow, National School of Leadership, Pune. Abstract Worldwide, approximately three billion people – half the planet – survive on $2 a day. More than one billion of them survive on half that amount or less, the World Bank’s definition of the severest poverty. Financial inclusion involves the challenge of reaching out to the un-reached with banking facilities. In a country like India, how do we do it in the wake of inadequate roads to the rural interiors, no electricity and telecommunication facilities, low literacy levels where an account holder may be able to give a fingerprint because he/she is uneducated? One of the options is to implement massive usage of technological services. However, before this paper embarks upon the various technologies that can augment financial inclusion, it must be remembered that infrastructure holds a priority to technology implementation. In this backdrop, RBI’s move to implement financial inclusion on a country-wide scale hinges on the successful interfacing of banking services with technological services. By technological service, I am referring to IT services and telecom services. For the information technology sector, rural India seldom kindled interest. Companies like IBM, HP and i-flex have realized the “golden goose” and have started pilot projects in some areas. In the wake of discovering how IT and telecom services have a major role to play in the domain of financial inclusion, this research paper will refer to case studies from across the globe to give an insight of how financial inclusion is being given an impetus by technology. The methodology of research is based purely on secondary sources. Top Keywords technology, financial inclusion, information technology, telecommunications. Top |