Fino Payments Bank launched its “Digital Services Suite” in Mumbai on Tuesday to expand its footprint in the space of digital banking and payments. Payments integration into popular apps in India is expected to drive the digital payments market to US$ 1 trillion by 2023 from the current US$ 200 billion, according to a recent Credit Suisse report.
In September 2017, Fino had launched its mobile banking app BPay which will be the key driver for digital transition of customers from assisted to self-service mode. The app will make smartphones the new banking points by allowing customers to make bill payments, recharges, fund transfers, buy insurance, put up gold loan requests and other savings and investment-related services that will be added over a period of time, said Rishi Gupta, MD & CEO, Fino Payments Bank.
In addition to BPay, Fino Payments Bank today introduced a suite of four digital products that included: Digi Savings Account (online account opening with only Aadhaar number and PAM card); Net Banking (for those not so mobile-savvy but comfortable to do banking on web or online); Unified Payments Interface (UPI) BHIM app (where customers can access UPI, create a virtual identity and make P2P payments through the Bank’s BPay mobile banking app) and Fastag (enable digital payments at national highway plazas.)
“Digital is an integral part of our +Phygital+ strategy and the way forward for banking, where the changing landscape is opening up digital banking opportunities outside of metros, including from Tier III to Tier IV places. Alongside working with NPCI for offering UPI to customers, our four digital initiatives are customer centric in simplifying banking and payments, enabling transition to self-service mode and helping create wealth,” Gupta said.
He said the Bank’s digital initiatives would help reach out to a larger segment of customers including those adopting digital banking for the first time, besides complementing the network of physical touch points and giving customers a choice to engage with the bank anywhere, anytime and on any platform. “While 70% of our active customers are digitally active, 40% of the CASA throughput is through these digital assets,” he said, adding that Fino also plans to deploy over 10,000 Android-based mPos devices to facilitate digital banking and enhanced customer experience.
Describing Payments Banks space as new globally, he said the emergence of innovative banking models like Fino Bank has opened opportunities where – as reach of such banking expands –there will be demand for related financial services. “Partnership is our strategy and our focus is on creating the biggest financial services platform in the country while also exploring partnership opportunities. We are servicing 200 million transactions annually and are set to step into unchartered territories,” Gupta said.
He said that since the bank’s launch in July 2017, it had: acquired a customer base of nearly one million besides serving customers of other banks through its interoperable banking platform; facilitated growth of domestic remittance business by over three times in volume and value; sourced gold loans to partner banks that grew over 100% from Rs 40 crores to Rs 90 crores per month; and ensured cross sell of health insurance and loans (through BC lending).
Highlighting ‘peculiar’ problems of cash shortages in rural India, he said “Our focus is to engage on Current and Savings accounts as we are 70% rural and 30% urban with Rs 100 crore deposits (CASA). Besides tieups with other NBFCs soon, we have plans to raise capital of Rs 300 crores at bank level from now to September-October 2018, besides some dilution on the Primary side. We have 475 branches and plan to add 100 more this year, besides launching new solutions in the next six months. About 75% of our CASA goes into Government Securities and 25% into Private Securities.”
Dilip Asbe, MD&CEO, NPCI pointed out that that digital banking efforts have “scratched” barely 10% of the market in digital payments where about 50% of the Indian population use digital payments.
