An ICT Framework for Enabling Rural Banking

This White Paper sets out the need for financial inclusion of the rural community for India’s development and the important role that the ICT can play in this endeavor. We suggest an integrated framework for the use of the ICT for delivery of rural services in a cost-effective, financially viable and sustainable manner. We identify the major issues in rural finance and indicate the possible ways for the use of the technology for improving the situation. We then describe a model developed by us for establishing rural information infrastructure and supporting the delivery of banking services to the rural people and the findings from its pilot implementation. We also outline a model for rural services with banking and ICT as core infrastructure. We conclude by indicating how ICT can be harnessed for achieving financial inclusion by describing the Microsoft technologies as an illustration.