By Dominick Rodrigues
Mumbai : PayNearby, India’s leading branchless banking and digital payments network, is leveraging its distribution network to assist citizens in enrolling for the covid-19 vaccination program – through over 15 Lakh PayNearby retail touch points across 17,500+ PIN codes in the country.
This effort is to create community awareness about the vaccine program while also assisting citizens to overcome tech and language barriers, and seamlessly register themselves on the CoWIN app. With this initiative, PayNearby aims to register 10 crore citizens, especially across semi-urban and rural India.
Emphasizing PayNearby’s committment to ensuring every citizen being vaccinated, Anand Kumar Bajaj, Founder, MD & CEO, PayNearby, said, “Flattening the COVID-19 curve amidst India’s battle against the worst-ever pandemic wave eventually rests on judicious vaccination deployment and we are dedicated to accelerating this process through our Digital Pradhan network.”
“The kirana stores have always been a crucial part of the Indian economy as well as an important hub for community exchanges. They enjoy a very high level of trust and familiarity in their local areas. This local trust will be channelized to create social awareness around the importance of immunization and also assist citizens limited by tech ability and language barriers to seamlessly register for the vaccination program.”
“Majority population — especially across semi-urban and rural India – is not tech-savvy enough to register themselves successfully on smartphones or website, besides being inhibited by language barriers that hinder the registration process.”
“To combat this challenge, PayNearby has introduced a CoWIN registration module within its trade app, that will enable +PayNearby Digital Pradhans+ to seamlessly assist local communities to register for the vaccination process. The single click, easy access to CoWIN app from within the PayNearby app at all retail stores in the country will not only help create momentum for the program, but also solve the citizen’s language and tech barriers.”
Incepted in April 2016, PayNearby is a fintech company creating technology and distribution network to reach financial/non-financial services to India and Bharat both. PayNearby empowers retail shop owners to offer digital services to local communities, thereby boosting digital financial inclusion, and its retailer services are focused on Agent Banking, Digital payments, microSavings, microInsurance, Loan enablement among others.
PayNearby is a DIPP-certified FinTech startup, partnering with various financial institutions including YES Bank, RBL Bank, IndusInd Bank, SBM Bank India, Equitas SFB, Ujjivan SFB, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, CC Avenue, Bill Desk, NPCI, FASTag, NBFC and FMCG companies. It is the sole technology provider using Aadhaar Enabled Payment Services (AEPS) and IMPS to YES Bank, making them one of the only two fintech companies hosted by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
