Shyam’s Story

Shyam is a 34-year-old banking agent who operates near the ghats in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. He provides a variety of services, including money transfers, Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) transactions, and account openings for multiple digital payment banks.

Before being an agent he used to be in marketing - he used to sell Postpaid and Prepaid SIMs for multiple brands. He left that job and started his own business and has been doing this for 7-8 years.

Even though people do not have accounts, they aspire to use digital payment apps. As it is time consuming to open an account in a traditional bank, he became an agent for Digital Payments Bank since the account opening process is simpler and he can open accounts for people in five minutes. The ATMs are often out of cash, so he also offers AePS and withdrawal services. Most of his business is from AePS. It is quite popular in the area as there's a hospital and college close by. Most of the people who come to open an account are college students from BHU. He feels that customers usually don't open accounts with people they don't know. College students come and talk to him, and gain trust in him when they understand that he'll be here and won't leave.

His set-up is a small table along a wide variety of shops on a busy street. On the table he has two biometric devices- he only uses one as the sensor of the other one isn't the best. He keeps it out just for display. Most of his work is done in his mobile phone. He also has set up a merchant UPI account and QR code for himself to receive payments. He spent around INR 50,000 to set up his centre.

He opens accounts for three different digital payments banks as that earns him more money. He started out through SIMs, recharges, and money transfers, eventually graduating to account opening to build up the revenue stream. To him this is a job, he does it to earn a living.

In the two onboardings we observed, he opened the Digital Payments Bank accounts and proceeded to open accounts on three different UPI apps for these customers. While opening the digital bank account, he charges the customer an extra hundred over and above what the service provider charges, as he only earns Rs.25 from the service provider. For the UPI apps, he charges another Rs.100. He also used his referral links from all three UPI apps, receiving that incentive reward as well.

In opening so many accounts, he created much confusion for the customer who only had basic literacy and barely any digital literacy. Although he is quite talkative and expressive, he struggled to explain PIN and safety in these digital services to the customers. Agents' income is commission based, so they are incentivised to maximise onboarding numbers - this results in agents onboarding customers onto multiple platforms and explaining all of it at the same time, which the customers simply cannot comprehend in that time span.