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.
A credit co-operative society takes deposits from its members and lends to them, under state co-operative law, without holding a banking licence. It answers to a Registrar of Co-operative Societies rather than to the Reserve Bank.
The category is large and goes by many names. A patpedhi in Maharashtra, a Souharda co-operative in Karnataka and a Primary Agricultural Credit Society in a village are all societies rather than banks. The Ministry of Cooperation counts 1,01,718 PACS alone, with 13 crore members.
Registered, and uninsured
A society registered with its Registrar is registered with a state authority, which is the distinction the 2019 Bill on unregulated deposit schemes draws, on PRS's summary. Whether any particular scheme is lawful is a question for the enacted law.
It does not make the deposits insured. The DICGC states that "Primary cooperative societies are not insured by the DICGC." A society can fail and there is no statutory ₹5,00,000 backstop behind its depositors.
These two facts are routinely collapsed into one. A depositor who asks "is it registered?" and gets a yes has established that the collection is legal, and nothing at all about whether the money is protected.
Why this matters for daily collection
Societies are heavily represented among institutions running daily deposit collection, and at the door the experience is identical to a bank's: an agent, a fixed daily amount, a passbook or a printed receipt, and a route that has run for years.
Nothing in that experience distinguishes an insured institution from an uninsured one. Only the licence does, which is why the bank-or-society check is the first thing worth doing and the co-operative credit structure guide explains where the line falls.