Ingenico enables access to rural population for FINO in India

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Ingenico, a leading worldwide provider of payment solutions, joined hands with Financial Inclusion Network & Operations (FINO) in India to help them deliver Micro finance & NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) payment solutions to the under-served and the unbanked sector.

FINO uses Bandhus/agents to reach out to the rural and far flung areas to carry out secure financial transactions for multiple banks, state and central government social upliftment schemes and Microfinance agencies with the help of Ingenico handheld Biometric POS terminals.

Over 25,000 Ingenico’s Bio930G terminals of Ingenico have been deployed by FINO till date out of which, over 7.000 successfully deployed in the last quarter of 2010 for NREGS. The deployment of terminals continues in 2011.

FINO provides turnkey technological solutions to institutions such as Banks, Insurance companies, Government Social Schemes, Microfinance Institutions, and Corporate Enterprises, enabling them to take their financial products and services to the doorstep of millions of unbanked and under-banked households across India. In order to make complete financial inclusion a reality, FINO relies on Ingenico’s technology for authentication and authorization of the business correspondent and the customers which represents one of the largest challenges of any financial inclusion effort.

Manish Khera, CEO, FINO, said: "Our ongoing collaboration with Ingenico has enabled us to provide world-class proven biometric technologies for delivering payment solution for financial institutions and NREGS like Government schemes, taking doorstep banking and Government social schemes benefits to the underprivileged in the remotest parts of India. This contributes towards making Financial Inclusion a reality.

"The successful deployment of over 7000 Bio930G using strategic customized biometric application for NREGS government wage disbursement in rural areas has put FINO solutions with Ingenico’s Bio930G miles ahead of the several technologies experimented in India for government social disbursements and financial inclusion programs."

Currently, over 11000 Bandhus/Agents associated with FINO are carrying Ingenico’s Bio930G, servicing approximately 25 Million enrolled customers through highly secure, reliable, robust and integrated handheld POS terminal to remote locations and are seamlessly processing millions of financial transactions for the millions of customers.

Vivek Sagar, CEO, Ingenico International India Pvt Ltd, said: "We are very proud to be associated with FINO, which is a phenomenal success in India’s efforts to propagate financial inclusion of the under-served and under-banked. FINO’s effort in providing reliable payment solution for government NREGS scheme for disbursement of wages across rural areas has been true demonstration of usage of technological excellence and benefits the underprivileged society. This is a testimony of Ingenico’s leadership in the payment solutions space, even as we look at leveraging Ingenico’s world class technologies and ideas to bring about tangible changes to society in general."

The BIO930G wireless POS terminal provides FINO’s Bandhus/Agents the freedom to acquire, process and verify biometric data on the move – and conveniently undertake secure biometric transactions wherever they are while providing the transaction report at the time of the transaction.

Designed to simplify user identification and authentication, and make it easy to integrated biometric control into a wide range of payment, government wage payments and micro credit applications, the Bio 930 family of terminals seamlessly optimize the entire biometric control process, thereby enabling FINO to deliver a large range of financial and banking services to the rural population.