Is pigmy collection already part of your core banking system?

Before an institution buys pigmy collection software, it is worth asking a duller question: how much of it do you already own?

The answer is usually "half". A pigmy deposit is two things that are easy to mistake for one. There is the account, which lives in your ledger and needs interest, maturity, commission and reports. And there is the collection, which happens at a doorstep with an agent, an amount and a receipt. Core banking systems built for co-operatives tend to carry the first. Whether they reach the second is a separate question, and it is the one that decides whether you need anything new.

The account is in the standard; the round is not

The clearest public reference for what a co-operative core banking system should do is the functional and technical requirements document that the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), set up by the Reserve Bank, prepared for urban co-operative banks in July 2017. Among the deposit types a system should support, it lists "Term Deposit, Daily Deposit" alongside savings, current and recurring accounts.

We read all 112 pages for anything about the collection itself. The document does not describe collection agents, handheld devices or doorstep collection. Its only mention of agents concerns insurance distribution. So a system built to that standard can be expected to hold a daily-deposit account properly. It cannot be assumed to put anything in an agent's hand.

That matches what vendors publish, which falls into four patterns.

Four ways the collection layer arrives

These are examples of each pattern, taken from the vendors' own pages on 3 October 2026. They are not a ranking, the list is not complete, and a vendor appearing here is not a recommendation. What each one states is reported; nothing has been tested.

1. From your core banking vendor, as an add-on. The account is a standard product, and the same vendor sells a field app on top. LIST Software lists Pigmy Deposits among the deposit modules of its Custodian system and names "Mobile based Pigmy Collection" as an add-on product. VBank describes a separate Smart Daily Collection Mobile App alongside its core system. TrustBankCBS lists "Daily (Small-Savings) Deposits" among its deposit types and refers to an agency banking app for field operations.

2. As a module inside the core system. One pigmy module page describes the product as "integrated within a Core Banking System", covering agent mapping, mobile collection app integration, receipts, interest and posting to the general ledger. The page does not name the company behind it, which is itself worth noticing before any conversation.

3. As a separate system that feeds the one you have. COBANKS states that banks use it to modernise daily collection "without replacing their core banking or society management software", exchanging files with the existing system. Our comparison of four collection products shows which exchange formats and interfaces each one names.

4. As a standalone app. Pigmy Plus, from a Puttur firm, describes agent, user and admin apps with offline entry, a Bluetooth printer and commission calculation, and states no core banking integration at all. Some institutions skip the market entirely: Aditya Anagha, a multi-state credit society in Nagpur, publishes its own collection app for its agents.

The patterns trade the same things against each other. An add-on from your core banking vendor removes an integration but ties the field equipment to that vendor. A separate collection system can be changed on its own, but its records have to be matched to the ledger every day. A standalone app with no stated integration usually means someone re-keys or uploads the day's collections, which is exactly the gap that collection fraud exploits.

Shared platforms: what is and is not stated

Two national programmes now supply core banking to large parts of the sector, and neither publishes a daily-collection feature.

Urban co-operative banks. NUCFDC, the sector's umbrella organisation, offers Sahakar CBS as a multi-tenant service with a choice of two platforms, Finacle v11.0 and TCS BaNCS v15.1. Its page names no deposit products, so it says nothing either way about daily deposit or agents. A bank moving to it should ask how its existing pigmy accounts migrate and what the agents will carry afterwards.

Primary agricultural credit societies. The national computerisation project puts societies on common ERP software, and its published documents do not mention daily collection. Our guide to PACS computerisation sets out what the scheme does and does not cover.

Six questions for your current vendor

Put these to whoever supplies your core banking system before you speak to any collection vendor. The answers tell you which of the four patterns you are in.

1. Is daily or pigmy deposit a standard product in our system, with interest, maturity and agent commission calculated there?
2. Do you sell a field collection app or device, and what does it cost per agent and per year?
3. How do collections reach the ledger: live as they are entered, or as a file at the end of the day? Which file formats do you accept?
4. Where is commission calculated: in the core system, in the collection system, or in both, and which figure wins if they differ?
5. What happens to a collection recorded offline if the device never syncs?
6. If we bring in a separate collection product, what will you charge to accept its files or open an interface?

If the answer to the first two is yes, the cheapest project may be the one you already have a contract for. If the third answer is "a file", ask who reconciles it, every day, and how a difference is investigated. The compliant collection round checklist covers the controls either way.

What we could not establish

• Whether Finacle v11.0 or TCS BaNCS v15.1, as offered through Sahakar CBS, carry a daily-deposit product or any field collection. The NUCFDC page names no deposit products.
• Whether the IDRBT 2017 document has been superseded. We found no later version.
• Prices. None of the vendors named on this page publishes one.
• Which pattern any particular institution uses. Institutions rarely publish their core banking vendor, and a website footer naming a developer credits the website, not the banking system.
• How many institutions use any product named here. Vendor customer counts are the vendors' own figures.

Where we stand

Pigmity sells no software, takes no payment from any vendor, and has no commercial relationship with anyone named on this page. Vendors are described only by what they publish, on the date shown. If you are a vendor and something here is wrong or out of date, our corrections page explains how to tell us; corrections are free and dated.