New Delhi, March 22: Department of posts' payments bank is likely to become operational by March 2017, communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today.

"Very soon by March next year we are going to bring in the payments bank of the postal department. And how things are changing, we have just got in-principle approval and we are going to the cabinet soon," Prasad said. India Posts had received an in-principle approval from the RBI on September 7 to set up a payments bank within 18 months.

The minister said 60 international consortium's were keen to partner India Post for third-partner delivery for insurance and banking.

India Post has the largest network of core banking solution branches in India, Prasad told Digital India Summit here.

"When I became minister (2014), just 230 India Post branches had core banking solutions. As of yesterday, 20,494 post offices have come under core banking," he said.
"Today I am very proud to announce that the core banking linkage of post offices is bigger than the SBI. The SBI has 16,333 core banking solution branches," he said.
On ATMs, he said the number has risen from four to 850. By mid-April it will go to 1,000.