The Tamil Nadu government is planning to apply for a payments bank license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Hindustan Times reported on November 2. If granted, it will be the first state to get such a license. A payment bank license allows an entity to offer many of the same facilities as a regular bank such as savings accounts, remittance facilities, and debit cards but not lending facilities like loans and credit cards. Why does Tamil Nadu want a payments bank license? The state is seeking to set up a payments bank to efficiently manage its funds and monitor its disbursal through various welfare schemes, the state's Minister of Finance Palanivel Thiaga Rajan said according to HT. This is one among the several measures the government is taking to ensure that the funds meant for social welfare schemes do not lay idle, aren’t delayed, or used for another purpose. Rajan revealed that the special task force set up by the government in August to reconcile accounts and identify lapsed funds tracked funds worth Rs 2000 crores which were not utilised by various district administrations and departments and remained out of the purview of the government's accounting system. "The ₹2,000 crore that can be remitted back to the treasury is just a trailer…I don’t want to commit any amount but I am sure several thousand crore rupees will be remitted back to the government account in the next few months as the task force continues to analyse" – Rajan as reported…
