India’s Little Shops Are a Massive Banking Network in the Making

It may look like an ordinary watch and mobile phone shop. But for many people in its south Mumbai neighborhood, it’s basically the local bank branch. The proprietor, Rakesh Sharma, is one of hundreds of thousands of shopkeepers making money transfers, deposits, and withdrawals on behalf of customers at all hours of the day and even late into the night.

Corner shops, tailors, pharmacies, and even doctors’ offices are adding these simple financial services as a lucrative new sideline. Sharma, sitting behind his computer in the Mayuresh Watches & Trader shop founded by his father, says they’re his “mainstay income” now. He takes in so much cash from customers—a couple of million rupees every day, the equivalent of roughly $30,000—that he or his brother must make a run to an actual bank branch almost every other hour to lessen the risk of being robbed.