Indian payment Paytm has received its licence for Paytm Payments Bank. With over two hundred million registered users and growing fast, should the banks be nervous?
According to the company the core mission of «Paytm Payments Bank» will be to cater to the requirements of the un-served and under-served communities of India, and bring them to the mainstream economy.
On its website the tech company says the current vice-president of business at Paytm, Renu Satti, will take over as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Paytm Payments Bank. The target date for commencement is 23 May 2017.
Shinjini Kumar, a former senior executive at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) was hired in February last year by Paytm to lead the development payments bank.
Half a Billion Accounts by 2020
Paytm Payments Bank has set itself a target of 200 million accounts, across current and savings accounts, and mobile wallets, within 12 months of the launch.
By 2020 the target is to hit 500 million accounts.
The founder of Paytm Vijay Shekhar Sharma was quoted earlier this year as saying «Our aim is to build a new business model in the banking industry, focussed on bringing financial services to 100's of millions of un-served or underserved Indians. With power of technology and innovation-at-scale, we aim to become a benchmark in world of banking,»
The WhatsApp Moment in Banking
Last year Singapore's largest bank DBS unveiled digibank, India’s first mobile-only bank. Their offering utilises biometrics and artificial intelligence (AI).
Digibank is a completely paperless, signatureless and branchless bank.
Customer authentication is done purely using the Aadhaar card, a biometrics-enabled ID which has been issued to over 1 billion Indians in what is the world’s largest biometric identification programme.
