Karachi, July 25, 2013:
Bank Alfalah has signed an agreement with Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (PBM) for
introducing a biometric based payment disbursement solution to its
beneficiaries in different parts of the country. Under the agreement, the
Bank will provide cash disbursements via its branchless banking offering to the
beneficiaries of the Bait-ul-Mal Child Support Program as a pilot program
(initially in the districts of Swat). Once successfully complete, this
transparent disbursement mechanism may be extended at a broader scale to other
areas in Pakistan.
Bank
Alfalah’s Head of ADC and Branchless Banking Amaar Naveed said at the occasion,
“Bank Alfalah is aggressively pursuing the creation of a financial ecosystem
that supports innovation through technology. This recent collaboration with PBM
is a reiteration of our commitment to enhancing financial access and inclusion
in order to reduce the gap between the ‘banked’ and the yet-to-be-banked’ in
Pakistan.”
Bank
Alfalah has been active in the Government to Persons initiative space since
2010 and to date we have distributed over PKR 7 Billion to more than 700,000
Beneficiaries for the Benazir Income Support Program and PKR 4 Billion to more
than 200,000 beneficiaries of the Watan Card Scheme. We hope this is the
inception of another promising initiative that we can scale up in the near
future.
Mr
Tariq Malik, MD PBM, speaking at the signing ceremony added, “This joint
venture of both PBM and Bank Alfalah is likely to lead to the opening of a new
era of the transparent and efficient disbursement of funds to the
underprivileged segment of the society selected through Proxy Means Testing
(PMT).” He added that “Under this agreement, in the pilot phase, Smart Cards
with bio-metric verification systems will be introduced in the districts of
Swat for CSP beneficiaries. The scope of the aforementioned collaboration and
related services may be extended to other parts of the country after mutual
consultation.”
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