For India’s banks, it is a relatively inexpensive way to recruit customers. While about 70 percent of India’s population is (dispersed) among more than 600,000 villages, the entire (country) has only 33,500 bank branches. Correspondents like Ms. Yashwant have set up 74 million bank accounts in India.
“If you used the traditional high-cost banking (system), you will never reach these people,” said Jayant Sinha, who is managing (director) of the India office of Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm set up by Pierre M. Omidyar, the (founder) of eBay.
Ms. Yashwant has been a (correspondent) in Kolad for four months, for State Bank, India’s biggest bank. The $200 or so she earns in an average month is a good wage in rural India, where the average monthly income is only about $65.
Traveling by bus or rickshaw to villages around her town to recruit customers, Ms. Yashwant meets a variety of challenges. In some remote villages her wireless Internet connection fades in and out. Frequent blackouts disrupt the work. And the fingerprint scanner can (struggle) to read the calloused fingers of farm laborers.
On a recent rain-soaked afternoon, in her Kolad office, she patiently persevered to take a print from Rajashri Nakati, a 35-year-old (farmhand). “I want to save my money,” said Ms. Nakati, a mother of five. “If I leave it at home, it will get spent.”
Ms. Yashwant dragged Ms. Nakati’s rough fingers over her scanner several times, sighing as her laptop beeped when the scan did not render an acceptable imprint. She repeated the exercise with six (fingers), three on each hand, as a gaggle of women, friends and relatives of Ms. Nakati, dressed in brightly colored saris watched through a window.
