Aiming for Mass
The contrast is stark. Tech savvy consumers of financial services are spoilt for choice. Paperless onboarding of customers with Aadhaar linked KYC to digital money transfer are par for the course. This was unthinkable till a few years ago. So were inventions such as bots and artificial intelligence taking over customer services. However, people in remote areas do not get even basic services, mainly because banks find serving them unprofitable.
To reduce the gap, the Reserve Bank of India, or RBI, has allowed two new categories of banks payments banks and small finance banks or SFBs. The idea is to build small and nimble institutions that can offer services in the countrys remotest parts, urban pockets where the economy is informal, and even to sections of industry, such as small and medium enterprises, or SMEs, which find it difficult to access
