Exploring Branch Less Banking Alternatives in Rural Areas as a Part of Financial Inclusion

After the advent of self-service technologies in Indian banking sector, there has been a significant change in customers' service consumption pattern. As banking service has gone through a positive technological change, it should also be noted that any such change is not considered good unless it is usable, understandable and finally adoptable by the user (Dix 2001). It is a daunting task to educate and convince a customer to develop trust, adjust with the newer technologies that facilitate faster transactions, provide cost advantages to service provider and give benefits to the government in launching campaigns. The self-service concept in many businesses is catching considerable recognition. Self service technologies play a vital role in reducing costs of an organization by facilitating automated interface between service provider and the customer. Financial inclusion is one of the best initiatives by government of India in uplifting of poor and needy people who are unbanked. As real India lives in rural India, inclusion of these neglected segments in the socio-economic mainstream and enabling them to reap benefits of globalization should stand as a priority. Examples of SSTs include internet based services, automated hotel checkout, automated teller machines (ATMs). Under deductive argument method, further generalization of this article finding would result into testing of a model in a rural demography. The article identifies the problems, gaps in the research and lays a platform for future empirical works by developing hypothetical model deduced from literature review in rural areas to promote more efficient financial inclusion by embracing positivism research philosophy