Multiple banking system for EPFO contribution and payments

Bandaru Dattatreya, the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Labour & Employment was present at the signing.

Collections of EPF dues have been started with PNB, Allahabad Bank, Indian Bank, Union Bank of India in addition to State Bank of India through direct online mode, the Ministry of Labour & Employment said in a release.

Now, EPFO has signed agreement with another five banks viz. Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank for collection of remittances and payments to beneficiaries, at zero transaction charges.

It will facilitate all the stakeholders of EPFO by allowing the employers to deposit their EPF dues in a hassle-free, anywhere, anytime manner and PF members by direct payments of their bank accounts, the ministry said.

Consequent upon signing of agreement, the employers having bank account with these banks may deposit EPF dues directly in EPFO’s account using internet banking on real time basis instead of going through the aggregator mode.

The minister said, "EPFO is one of the largest social security providers with a corpus of rupees twelve lakh crore.  It has a contributing membership of 4.5 crore and about 20 crore accounts are serviced by EPFO.  EPFO collects around rupees seventy-five thousand crores annually from the establishments covered under the Act.  EPFO settles about 1.16 crore claims in a year and disburses about fifty-four thousand crore annually."

Image: PIB