Kisan Credit Card

The KCC Scheme was introduced with the objective of providing adequate and timely credit to the farmers for their agricultural operations. The Government of India provides interest subvention of 2% and Prompt Repayment Incentive of 3% to the farmers, thus making the credit available at a very subsidized rate of 4% per annum. The scheme was further extended for the investment credit requirement of farmers viz. allied and non-farm activities in the year 2004 and further revisited in 2012 by a working Group under the Chairmanship of Shri T. M. Bhasin, CMD, Indian Bank with a view to simplify the scheme and facilitate issue of Electronic Kisan Credit Cards. The scheme provides broad guidelines to banks for operationalizing the KCC scheme. Implementing banks will have the discretion to adopt the same to suit institution/location-specific requirements.

Objective / Purpose The Kisan Credit Card scheme aims at providing adequate and timely credit support from the banking system under a single window with the flexible and simplified procedures to the farmers for their cultivation and other needs as indicated below :

1. To meet the short term credit requirements for the cultivation of crops;
2. Post-harvest expenses;
3. Produce marketing loan;
4. Consumption requirements of farmer household;
5. Working capital for maintenance of farm assets and activities allied to agriculture;
6. Investment credit requirement for agriculture and allied activities

Type of Card

• A magnetic stripe card with PIN (Personal Identification Number) with an ISO IIN (International Standards Organization International Identification Number) to enable access to all banks ATMs and micro ATMs
• In cases where the Banks would want to utilize the centralized biometric authentication infrastructure of the UIDAI (Aadhaar authentication), debit cards with magnetic stripe and PIN with ISO IIN with biometric authentication of UIDAI can be provided.
• Debit Cards with magnetic stripes and only biometric authentication can also be provided depending on the customer base of the bank. Till such time, UIDAI becomes widespread, if the banks want to get started without inter-operability using their existing centralized bio metric infrastructure, banks may do so.
• Banks may choose to issue EMV (Europay, MasterCard and VISA, a global standard for the interoperation of integrated circuit cards) and RUPAY compliant chip cards with magnetic stripe and pin with ISO IIN.
• Further, biometric authentication and smart cards may follow the common open standards prescribed by IDRBT and IBA. This will enable them to transact seamlessly with input dealers and also enable them to have the sales proceeds credited to their accounts when they sell their output at mandies, procurement centres, etc

Delivery Channels : The following delivery channels shall be put in place to start with so that the Kisan Credit Card is used by the farmers to effectively transact their operations in their KCC account.

1. Withdrawal through ATMs / Micro ATM
2. Withdrawal through BCs using smart cards.
3. PoS machine through input dealers
4. Mobile Banking with IMPS capabilities / IVR
5. Aadhaar enabled Cards