MoU between Railways and SBI for door step banking

On January 14, 2020, the South-Central Railways and SBI signed MoU to implement door step banking in 585 railway stations

Highlights

The MoU will enable direct pick up of cash from all the railway stations included in the MoU. Before the agreement, the earnings generated at the railway stations were manually sent to nearest banks that were authorised to collect the deposit on behalf of the Railways. This delayed the remittance of cash because of several factors such as availability of man power, holidays, etc.

Major Benefits of the new system

The door step banking will provide uniform cash remittance mechanism in all the railway stations. It will also provide real time information about the cash that is deposited by different stations. This will enable increased accountability and also will help in better supervision. This method will also avoid unwanted accumulation of cash at railway stations.

Why not DBT?

The Direct Bank Transfer is not a feasible option at the moment. This is because there are still persons in the interior parts of the country using cash to buy their tickets. Apart from interior parts, cash is still used in urban areas to buy tickets as well.

The number of passengers using online to book their tickets have increased since 2011-12. In 2015, around 54% of tickets were booked online as compared to 2012. In 2018 the e-ticket sales have been up by 14%. However, there are still an accountable population using cash to buy their tickets.

Month: Current Affairs - January, 2020