As per information received from State Bank of India (SBI), it has handed over the task of opening and operating the accounts in rural areas to an organization known as “Zero Mass Foundation (ZMF)”, which is one of their National Business Correspondents (BC). BC model envisages use of intermediate agents/organizations for supporting the Bank in extending financial services to unbanked population at an affordable cost at their door step.

ZMF is operating in Assam, Tripura, Sikkim, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Till now it has opened more than 99 lakh Savings Bank accounts under Small Accounts category.

The operations done in the account are safe as all ZMFs, Customer Service Point (CSP) are connected to Bank’s server in a firewall secured environment. All financial transactions are happening at online real-time basis. Each debit/credit transaction happening at CSP service point reflects in Bank’s Core Banking System (CBS) and a system generated print out is given to the customer for each transaction as an acknowledgement of the gransaction.

This was stated by Shri Jayant Sinha, Minister of State in Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.

Business Correspondent model expands small account access via secure CSP connections enabling real time online transactions recorded in bank CBS. State Bank of India has engaged Zero Mass Foundation as a National Business Correspondent to open and operate Small Accounts in rural areas, achieving wide geographic coverage. Customer Service Points connect to the bank's servers in a firewall secured environment and execute financial transactions on an online, real time basis; each transaction posts to the Core Banking System and a system generated printout is issued to the customer as acknowledgement.