EPFO to offer online PF withdrawal facility by August: report

Subscribers of Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will be allowed the facility of online withdrawal of funds beginning August, as the retirement fund body moves to reduce paperwork and provide hassle-free service to its subscribers.

With the new facility, settling PF withdrawal claims would just take few hours.

"We are hopeful of launching an online facility for PF withdrawal claims by August this year. We have already digitised our records and processes using Oracle operating system," reports quoting EPFO sources said.

"EPFO will soon buy blade servers for setting up three Central Data Centres at Gurgaon, Dwarka (Delhi) and Secunderabad. All the three centres will be connected to 123 offices of the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)," the report quoted him as saying.

EPFO hopes to complete the process of installation of servers by May and put in place the response system after final testing in June.

"After intensive testing and trials in June and July, we are planning to launch the online PF withdrawal facility in August this year," the official said.

Operationalisation of the system would enable subscribers to apply online for PF withdrawal, which will be transferred directly to their bank accounts.

At present, subscribers who wish to settle their accounts with the EPFO are required to apply manually.

For settling online claims, the subscribers would have to activate their Universal (portable PF) Account Numbers, which are seeded with KYC details, including bank accounts, Aadhaar number and permanent account number.

The EPFO has over five crore subscribers and has so far issued around 61.5 million UANs, out of which 23.4 million were activated by the subscribers so far, the report pointed out.