This page is informational and is not legal advice. It describes rules, orders and rulings as published or reported on the dates shown; read the primary text before relying on any of it.
This checklist is for the operational side of a co-operative bank's doorstep collection scheme, once the Board-approved policy from appointing pigmy agents is in place. It covers what has to happen correctly on every round, not once a year.
1. Issue a receipt on the bank's behalf, every time
RBI's rules require cash collected to be acknowledged "by issuing a receipt on behalf of the bank" at the point of collection. This is not optional or occasional — every rupee collected at the door needs an acknowledgment that identifies the bank, whether that is a passbook and carbon-book entry, a printed slip from a handheld device, or an SMS or app confirmation. A collection with no receipt is the one failure mode a depositor cannot later prove happened at all.
2. Meet the crediting deadline
Cash collected has to reach the customer's account the same day or the next working day, depending on the time of collection. Treat this as a measured operational metric with an owner, not a policy statement that exists only on paper. The gap between collection and posting is where under-recording, unposted receipts and delayed crediting all live, and it is the one clause in the Directions that directly narrows that gap.
3. Give the credit-date advice at the moment of collection
At the time cash is collected, the customer must be given an advice stating the date the credit will appear. This is distinct from the receipt itself, and it is the control most often skipped in practice — it is also the one that makes a delayed credit visible to the customer before it becomes a dispute, rather than after.
4. Reconcile agent-wise and member-wise, daily
Reconciliation should happen every day, with the day's cash totals matched against the day's member-wise entries and any exception escalated rather than carried forward to the next day's sheet. A discrepancy that rolls over unresolved for a week is much harder to trace than one caught the same evening. RBI's Master Directions on fraud risk management require a Board-approved fraud risk policy with early-warning signals for every urban, state and central co-operative bank; daily reconciliation on the collection round is one of the concrete practices that policy should specify, not a separate exercise from it.
5. Complete KYC, even at the doorstep
Customer identification for doorstep banking follows RBI's 2025 KYC Directions for urban co-operative banks. The doorstep rules allow KYC documents to be submitted at the customer's address rather than at the counter, but an acknowledgment still has to be issued for whatever is collected, and the agreement must name the address where the service will be delivered. Doorstep convenience does not relax the underlying KYC standard.
6. Make the bank's responsibility for the agent explicit
RBI's 2022 doorstep banking guidelines require the agreement with the customer to state that the bank "will be responsible for the acts of omission and commission of its 'agent'." Put this sentence, or its substance, in the account-opening agreement itself, not only in an internal policy document the customer never sees.
7. Know what the customer cannot demand
The Directions state plainly that the doorstep agreement gives the customer no right to claim the service at their doorstep on any particular day, and that the bank's liability for a doorstep transaction is the same as if the customer had transacted at the branch — doorstep banking is an extension of the branch, not a separate promise. Front-line staff and agents should be able to explain this distinction if a customer raises it: the bank owes the same standard of care as at the counter, but not a promised daily visit.