The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation ( EPFO)  has introduced a new, centralized pension system that has made the lives of millions of retirees more manageable in India. Centralised Pension Payments System (CPPS) under this new program allows EPS members to withdraw their pensions from any bank branch across the country, all without moving their PPOs in case of shifting.

Under the old system, retirees often have to undergo prolonged procedures and fill, as pension is a decentralized scheme with each regional EPFO office processing through handfuls of local banks. In new states or even in cities, retirees often have to undergo additional administrative procedures and visits to a bank for verification purposes. All these are no longer problems under CPPS; the pension is credited automatically into the account of the retiree without any further procedure.

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Union Labour and Employment Minister Mansukh Mandaviya recently stated that the pilot test of CPPS has been successfully completed and this result has been a great milestone for the modernization journey of EPFO. The pilot run was conducted over two days at the end of October, which will allow free flow worth around Rs 11 crore pension money successfully to be disbursed to more than 49,000 retirees in the Jammu, Srinagar, and Karnal regions. The promising results from the pilot run have enabled CPPS to look forward to the day when it will go national by January 2025.

Eventually, CPPS will benefit 78 lakh EPS pensioners from all parts of the country. Once approved, credits will automatically flow into the retiree's account - no bank visits, return of verification forms, or delay. Reform related to this has made pension payout by EPFO much simpler and quicker for a population not likely to be able to relocate upon retirement to other parts of the country or may not have full access.

This forms part of the overall IT revamp by EPFO, referred to as the Centralized IT Enabled System (CITES 2.01). The 109th meeting of the EPFO Central Board's Executive Committee held in October addressed timelines and activities for the rollout of CPPS across the country. As part of CPPS, EPFO is also upgrading its technology platform to make it faster, more responsive, and better service yielding to its constituents.

Mandaviya noted that CPPS is just one move toward a "more robust, responsive and tech-enabled" EPFO. The larger plan is to make the organization as accessible as possible to its members-to allow retirees, for example, to receive their pension at any place without any hassle.