Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

The bank-led branchless banking model in India was born out of a national financial inclusion mandate that seeks to connect unbanked populations to formal financial services. This is implemented through a transformational, hybrid infrastructure that extends outreach via low-scale banking structures. These low-scale banking structures take banking services out of the brick-and-mortar bank branches and into the hands of non-bank agents (or business correspondents) that can now drive uptake in unserved regions on the branchless banking platform. This note demonstrates the results of a study that looked at Eko, one of the prominent mobile banking business correspondents in India, in its collaboration with the largest public sector bank in the country. In particular, this note will focus on the role of their retail agent network and how certain informal, frequently unstipulated, practices on their part may help in acquiring and retaining customers on the platform. In this way, the retail agent network may indeed help in sustaining the transformational mobile banking ecosystem.