iMFAST — journey so far and ahead

Abstract

India lives in her villages, not in her cities. If the village perishes, India perishes too.” (Mahatma Gandhi) Integra's Mobile Financial Applications Secure Terminal (iMFAST) is a system developed to meet the requirements of branchless banking in Rural India. This paper describes the banking scenario in Rural India, its adversaries, need and requirements of branchless banking solution. It covers features of iMFAST and various components of the Financial Inclusion solution using iMFAST. The Device iMFAST runs customized Linux 2.6 on a 32 bit processor. It uses smart card(s) for identification, fingerprint for authentication, wired or wireless media for connectivity to the banking backend, voice guidance in local language to take care of illiteracy, impact printer for printing the transaction slip for record, built in GPS for recording the place of transaction, has built-in Li-ION battery. The solution comprises of iMFAST device and a central server to connect to the backend. It supports online and offline operations to take care of intermittency in network and can run on automotive battery for long outages of power. Second part covers the current deployment of iMFAST in banking and other non banking applications. It covers the banking applications, already developed and being used and also the applications likely to be developed in future, how it can be made interoperable with existing banking systems. The third part is a product roadmap covering various offshoots of the technology in financial and non financial e-governance applications. In financial segment it could be a device enabling doorstep banking a low cost rural ATM or device to at a sales counter to withdraw cash a mini ATM. The nonfinancial applications could be checking the validity of driving license and logging of driving offences centrally, Voter ID verification, health records and medical insurance etc.