In a big relief for consumers amid the ongoing Coronvirus pandemic and to ease the risk of stepping out, the Central government on Wednesday launched doorstep banking services for public sector banks in order to provide hassle-free convenient banking.

As part of the EASE Reforms, doorstep banking services is envisaged to provide the convenience of banking services to the customers at their doorstep through the universal touchpoints of Call Centre, Web Portal, or Mobile App. Customers can also track their service requests through these channels.

The services will be rendered by the Doorstep Banking Agents deployed by the selected Service Providers at 100 centres across the country. 

At present only non-financial services like pick up of negotiable instruments (cheque, demand draft, pay the order, etc), pick up new cheque book requisition slip, pick up of 15G or 15H forms, pick up of IT or GST challan, issue request for standing instructions, request for account statement, delivery of non-personalised cheque book, demand draft, pay the order, delivery of term deposit receipt, acknowledgement, etc, delivery of TDS or Form 16 certificate issuance, delivery of the pre-paid instrument or gift card are available to customers.

Financial services shall be made available from October 2020.

The doorstep banking services can be availed by customers of Public Sector Banks at nominal charges. The services shall benefit all customers, particularly senior citizens and “divyangs” who would find it at ease to avail these services.

Mean-while, The Covid-19 tally in India rose to 4,465,863 after nearly 96,000 fresh cases were registered in a single day. The death toll also increased from 73,890 to 75,063, according to latest data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The number of recoveries stood at 3,471,783.

While AstraZeneca announced a temporary halt late on Tuesday to the global trials of the Covid-19 vaccine candidate developed by the University of Oxford due to a serious adverse event in the United Kingdom, recruitment of participants in India had already been put on hold last week after the first 100 participants were administered the shot. The adverse event seen in the UK case has not been noted in any of the Indian participants so far. However, it is likely to be taken up by a safety expert group which will review information collected from the first set of participants in the human clinical trials in India.

Just a few days ago, India became the second country with the largest caseload, after the United States, which has over 6.3 million cases. India is followed by Brazil, Russia and Peru. However, in terms of deaths due to Covid-19, India ranks third after the US and Brazil. There are over 27.7 million cases of Covid-19 across the world, and 902,468 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

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