New Delhi, Feb 27 (IANS): Union Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday announced that India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) now has 2 crore customers under its ambit.

"In August last year, IPPB had reached the landmark of 1 crore customers in just its first year of operations. The next 1 crore customers have been acquired and onboarded in just 5 months. On an average, IPPB has been opening/maintaining a run rate of 33 lakh accounts per quarter," an official statement said.

With the launch of Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) Services in September 2019, IPPB has now become the single largest platform in the country for providing inter-operable banking services to the customers of any bank, it said, adding that with AePS services any common person with a bank account linked to Aadhaar can perform basic banking services such as cash withdrawals and balance enquiry irrespective of the bank they hold their account with.

Prasad said that the success of IPPB's business model underlines the government's intent in creating an inter-operable banking infrastructure for the public good contributing toward changing the financial inclusion landscape in India.

"Since its launch, IPPB has enabled more than 1.36 lakh post offices and 1.9 lakh 'dakiyas' to provide a complete suite of banking services at the doorstep of the customer providing access to any Aadhaar linked bank account, leading to an increase in rural banking infrastructure by almost 2.5 times," he added.