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.
Doorstep banking is the Reserve Bank of India's term for banking services delivered at a customer's residence or place of business rather than at a branch counter. Pick-up of cash against a receipt, the mechanism behind every pigmy deposit, is the first service listed under RBI's doorstep banking rules for urban co-operative banks.
RBI's Branch Authorisation Directions of 4 December 2025 devote a full chapter and annex to it. A co-operative bank may offer doorstep banking voluntarily, without prior RBI approval, but only under a scheme its own Board has approved and reviews annually, with RBI notified within 15 days of launch. The rules that protect a depositor are specific: cash collected must be acknowledged with a receipt, credited to the account the same day or the next working day, and the customer must be told the date the credit will appear. Charges, if any, must sit in the published, Board-approved policy.
Doorstep banking is not a right you can demand. The Directions state plainly that the arrangement gives a customer no entitlement to service at their door, and that the bank's liability is the same as if the transaction had happened at the branch. Doorstep banking extends the branch; it does not replace the obligations that come with it.
The framework also decides who may collect on a bank's behalf: since December 2025, smaller (Tier 1 and 2) urban co-operative banks may deliver doorstep banking only through their own permanent employees, not commission agents, while larger Tier 3 and 4 banks may still use agents. None of this reaches credit societies, patpedhis or Nidhi companies, which fall outside RBI's supervision and answer to their state Registrar instead.