Activities like Daily
Deposit Collection, Business / Gold Loan Recovery, Charges / Fees / Monthly
Rent / Cable TV Collections, Other Field Payment Collection and transferring
information to your Back-end software / application package without data entry
are the basic operations that can be done smoothly and effectively using
Palmtec.
In countries like
India, Micro Financing plays a vital role in the rural economy. Majority of the
common man and housewives earn everyday a small income, either through
daily-wages or from agriculture or cattle. Unless this money is saved properly,
they may loose. It is quite human to spend this money daily and end-up with no
savings. A Savings Account with daily deposit system is the solution. However,
most of them may not have access banks at all or clash with banking hours.
Similar to Daily Deposit Collection, a Daily Repaying Loan is also
can be useful to the customers. Eg, give an amount of Rs.10,000/- to a small
farmer to buy cows and recover Rs.65/- per day from his door step. Give receipt
containing the current balance and current remittance. Within 6 months the
entire loan will be paid back with a nominal profit to the bank, without
hassles on either side. Experience shows that, in these sorts of loans, the NPA
is close to nil. Banks have to automate this operation to make it more
efficient & profitable.
Presently, agents go to door-to-door and collect money from
shopkeepers & farmers on a daily basis. They give receipt against each
collection and they are supposed to remit this amount at bank the very next
day. However, due to various reasons, this remittance and related updations of
data rarely happens. This ultimately leads to mistakes & malpractices.
Computerization of the bank alone cannot solve this. A system to give receipt
on the spot, capture the data & later download to the PC, without
re-entering is required. Also, the account balance should be made up-to-date,
be printed in the next day's receipt. Other Daily Payment collections like
Cable TV monthly charges, Business / Gold / Personnel Loan Recoveries /
Installment payment etc also need a reliable system to collect money everyday
at the doorstep of their customers. All these areas Palmtec play a vital role.
By using Palmtec, agents
can go door-to-door for payment collections from shopkeepers, farmers,
housewives etc on a daily basis and collect the money and generate receipts for
each collections. The collection data can be the uploaded to the Back end
software for further processing of the MIS updations.
There are so many companies offering insurance packages, from both
public & private sectors. Some of them have international tie-ups too. So
it is becoming mandatory for them to have an effective way of payment
collection, follow up of prospective etc. Palmtec can help them in this. Here
the payment collection part is similar to that of Banks. Also we give a
facility to them to keep track of their prospective customers (name, phone
number, type, policy capacity etc) and keep updating the central system. This will
not only help the agent, it will also help the insurance companies to bring-up
new types of policies. Also they can use this data further, in case any agents
quits or so.
Palmtec is having an
embedded firmware “PAY COLLECT” for collecting payments and generate receipts.
Agents can download the details of the customers to Palmtec, before going to
the field. The receipt will have details like Company / Bank name, address,
customer name, account no., date, time, serial no., amount paid, balance
position, agent name etc.
At the end of the day, this data can be transferred to PC at the
Bank. While doing so, the up-to-date balance position will be loaded back to
the Palmtec too. So that, when he gives receipt next day, the correct balance
position will be shown. There
is no need of data entry and data verification. In case of any change in fields
like interest rate etc., the same can be done in PC software and can be
downloaded to Palmtec. This will speed up the process as well as eliminate any
chances for mistakes & malpractices.
Palmtec can be
integrated with your application software, irrespective of the OS & RDBMS
your system is running on. Data is exchanged in an encrypted format and so no
external or manual intervention is possible. This avoids all sorts of
malpractices. The transferring utility is invoked within your application
package and the data is automatically posted into the respective fields, as
soon as it is transferred. There is no need of data entry and data
verification. This utility will be embedded into the application software.
Data transfer
can be either through RS232 Serial Port. It is also possible to exchange data
through Modem. In which case, a normal external serial modem can be connected
to Palmtec and data can be sent to a remote PC through telephone line.
Working of the System in ONLINE Mode (GPRS)
The Palmtec- Amphibia is loaded with the firmware for Payment
Collection Application. The same is configured with the connectivity to the
central data server that has a Static IP where the relevant transaction data to
be queried is maintained. The device is loaded with the SIM card from any
Mobile companies like AIRTEL, IDEA, BSNL etc. The SIM has to be enabled with
GPRS and also the relevant facilities like Mobile Office etc so as to enable
GPRS communications. Arrays of schemes are available with the operators.
Customers are requested to choose any connection as per their requirement.
The MASTER DATA to be downloaded to the machine thru USB or FTP.
Further the agent can carry Palmtec-Amphibia to the field and whenever he meet
a customer, he can carryout the billing normally. After a bill is generated,
Palmtec- Amphibia will directly connect to the server. The Receiving cum
Answering program loaded in the web server verifies the authenticity of the
device and will receive the bill data and will send the relevant
acknowledgement back to Palmtec- Amphibia, and will update the same on to the
database.
The bill details,
after its generation can also be sent as an SMS to a server through a SMS
Gateway, which can be accessed using a LONG CODE provided by the Gateway
Provider. This is similar to SMS normally sent in Reality shows, but with
normal SMS rate.
In the case of
ONLINE updation of data using GPRS, the user needs to provide the following.
·
Server preloaded with Operating System.
·
A Static IP Address
·
Direct Internet Connection on Static IP on
the Server. No Nods.
·
Receiving Cum Answering Module integrated to
the Data Base.
·
Active SIM CARD with connection, GPRS and
Mobile Office Enabled
The GPRS Palmtec is to be configured with the
connectivity to the central data server that has a Static IP where the relevant
transaction data to be queried is maintained. The SIM card enabled with GPRS
pre-subscribed for Mobile Internet Access facility from any Mobile companies
like AIRTEL, HUTCH, BSNL etc. The Data Receiving & Answering Software
(LISTENER) listening to the port associated with the static IP of the SERVER,
on to which the PALMTEC-GPRS has to get connected.
