KOLAD, India — Time was, banks employed armies of human tellers. Later, they replaced many of them with (automated) teller machines. Now, India is using a hybrid of the two — the human A.T.M. — to expand banking to its vast rural population.
Swati Yashwant, a 29-year-old mother of one, is part of a growing legion of roving tellers intent on (providing) bank accounts to the nearly 50 percent of India’s 300 million households that do not have them. Using a (laptop) computer, wireless modem and fingerprint scanner, Ms. Yashwant opens accounts, takes deposits and (processes) money transfers for farmers and migrant workers in this small town 70 miles south of Mumbai, India’s financial capital.
To reduce the risk of robbery or theft, no (transaction) by law may exceed 10,000 rupees about $212. And in practice, many amount to no more than a dollar or two. But with the bulk of India’s population living in villages that have never had a bank branch, Ms. Yashwant, with her electronic devices, is a missionary of financial modernity.
Many Indians “don’t know anything about banking,” she said in her small office here, which is decorated with a (garlanded) picture of Ganesh, the Hindu god believed to remove obstacles. “I want to open their accounts and help them understand banking.”
