RBI grants in-principle nod for 11 payments banks

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank on August 19 granted 'in-principle' approval to 11 entities, including Reliance Industries, Aditya Birla Nuvo, Vodafone and Airtel, to set up payments banks and proposed such licences 'on tap' in future. The other entities, which have been given 'in-principle' approval are Department of Posts, Cholamandalam Distribution Services, Tech Mahindra, National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL), Fino PayTech, Sun Pharma's Dilip Shantilal Shanghvi and PayTM's Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

"The 'in-principle' approval granted will be valid for a period of 18 months, during which time the applicants have to comply with the requirements under the guidelines and fulfil the other conditions as may be stipulated by the Reserve Bank," RBI said in a statement. Going forward, RBI said the central bank would use the learning from this licencing round to appropriately revise the guidelines and move to give licences more regularly, virtually "on tap".

Commenting on the topic, Kumar Karpe, CEO, TechProcess Payment Services Ltd, stated, 'We believe that the Govt. of India and RBI has taken a positive step towards tapping the unbanked population of India by helping them to save, deposit, pay, and make use of remittance facilities. The announcement of issuing licenses to 11 payments banks in India will help to accelerate adoption of digital payments and widen the scope of cashless transactions in India. It will be interesting to see how the new licensees will leverage their existing strengths in technology and distribution to create differentiated offerings that will lead to financial inclusion.'