Business correspondent (BC) agents are the crucial last-mile infrastructure supporting India’s vision for efficient, population-scale delivery of financial and other government services using Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). They offer access to various financial services, digital and otherwise. Crucially, BC agents facilitate cash deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and balance checks through the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS). Despite the progress in making basic banking services universally accessible, challenges faced by Network Managers, corporate BCs, and individual agents hinder successful operations – impacting customer access to reliable and continuous financial services. Recognizing the pivotal role of CICO agents, this report identifies strategies to support agents in providing uninterrupted access to CICO services.
We construct a theoretical model to understand all factors impacting BC agent networks based on a literature review and expert interviews. This model was further refined with inputs from field interactions with 26 BC agents across 3 states. The findings of these field interactions provide rich, qualitative insight into the workings of the industry, and are detailed in this report. Accordingly, we propose three high-impact solutions: (1) to enable white-labelling of BC agents allowing them to mitigate the effects of transaction failures on customers; (2) a community-driven participatory rating system to empower customers and foster transparency; and (3) a context-sensitive pricing model to compensate agents to incentivize trustworthy service provision.
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