How Suryoday Small Finance Bank and airpay built a comprehensive cash management system- collection and delivery across India’s last mile.
Industry: Banking / Small Finance Bank
Services: Cash Collection & Cash Burial
Settlement: Same Day / T+1
The Partnership
A Bank Built for the Real Economy
India’s real economy runs on cash.
The microentrepreneur repaying a loan. The borrower receiving a disbursement. The branch manager in a semi-urban town who starts every morning by counting the float and planning the day around it. These are the customers Suryoday Small Finance Bank (SSFB) was built for.
SSFB’s distributed branch network is its defining advantage. Proximity to the customer is what makes the bank’s mission tangible. But that same proximity, deployed at scale, creates a question that no spreadsheet can answer: how do you move physical cash across hundreds of branches reliably, every day, without the armoured van infrastructure of a large commercial bank?
The answer is an agent network. And the partner is airpay.
Together, SSFB and airpay built a two-service cash management model- collection and delivery that operates through the same agent, across the same geography, within the same working day. It works the way SSFB’s business works: close to the ground, fast, and fully accountable.
The Model
One agent network. Two Services.
The heartbeat of this partnership is a single idea:
The same trained agent who picks up cash from a branch in the morning can deliver hard currency to a neighbouring branch by afternoon. One person. One working day. Two directions of cash.
This is not a coincidence of logistics. It is the design. The airpay–Suryoday partnership operates through the agent network- trained field agents deployed across geographies to manage physical cash in both directions.
| Cash Collection | Cash Burial | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Branch cash moves out to settlement | Hard currency delivered to the branch |
| Who acts | agent network picks up from the branch | agent network delivers to the branch |
| Authentication | App-based digital acknowledgement | OTP-verified handover |
| Settlement | Same day (pre-6pm)/ T+1 | Real-time OTP confirmation |
| Cash direction | Branch → airpay → Bank | airpay → Branch |
First Service
Cash Collection
Every rupee collected at an SSFB branch represents a real-life transaction. A loan repaid. A deposit made—a promise kept.
That cash needs to move.
Branch managers plan next-day disbursements against that day’s collections. The central treasury tracks liquidity across the network in real time. Precision is not a preference; it is how SSFB operates. The airpay cash collection process was built to honour that precision: a clear schedule, a trained agent, and digital acknowledgement at every handover.
Here’s how it works day-to-day:
| Stage | What Happens |
|---|---|
| 01 Schedule Triggered | An agent is assigned to the branch based on the day's collection schedule. The branch knows the pickup window in advance. |
| 02 An Agent Arrives | The agent reaches the branch at the designated time. The branch staff is ready with the cash prepared for handover. |
| 03 Count & Acknowledge | Cash is counted jointly. After OTP-based verification, the agent logs the collection in the system, and the branch receives a digital acknowledgement on the spot. |
| 04 Settlement Clock Starts | Collections cleared before 6:00 PM settle to SSFB's designated account the same day (T+0). Post-6 PM collections settle the next business day (T+1). |
Second Service
Cash Burial
Cash Burial is what makes this partnership complete and what makes it rare.
When an SSFB branch needs hard currency for a disbursement, a payout, or an urgent operational requirement, it does not wait, improvise, or escalate. It raises the requirement through airpay. An agent is identified. The cash moves.
No waiting. No gap in service. No workaround.
Every handover is secured by two-factor OTP authentication: both parties confirm digitally before cash changes hands. The record is tamper-proof, real-time, and instantly visible to both organisations. This is cash logistics run with the accountability of a digital transaction.
Here’s how the cash burial process works:
| Stage | What Happens? |
|---|---|
| 01 Requirement Raised | An SSFB branch identifies a cash need- a loan disbursement, a customer payout, or an operational requirement that demands hard currency on the ground. |
| 02 Cash Dispatched | The branch communicates the requirement to airpay. The nearest available agent is identified and dispatched with the required amount. |
| 03 Agent network Arrives | The agent arrives at the branch- the same agent who completed an earlier collection, or a newly assigned one with the full required amount. |
| 04 OTP Handover | Both parties complete a digital transaction on the airpay app. An OTP is generated and authenticated, creating a real-time, tamper-proof record of the transfer. |
| 05 Cash Buried | Only after OTP confirmation does the agent hand over the cash. The transaction is locked, reconciled, and visible to both airpay and SSFB in real time. |
The Bigger Picture
What Financial Inclusion Actually Looks Like
The phrase “financial inclusion” is often used. It is made really far less often.
Making it real means building for the places large infrastructure cannot reach. It means designing for the branch in a semi-urban corridor, the borrower in a rural town, the network where cash is the currency of daily life.
Traditional cash-in-transit services are built around scale, not proximity. Armoured vans, centralised vaults, rigid schedules- none of it reaches where SSFB operates.
The airpay–Suryoday partnership is a proof point for a different model. A trained field agent with a smartphone and a clear process, completing fully auditable cash transactions across a distributed branch network, within a single working day.
Two organisations that chose to build for the real economy and the infrastructure to prove it works.
