August 31, 2021 / 18:35 IST
Fintech infrastructure company Setu's Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Sahil Kini dreams of creating a digital Pigmy, a product that will encourage people to save money every day. Just last week, Setu's Application Programming Interface (API) went live on Google Pay to offer Equitas Small Finance Bank Fixed Deposits (FD) to customers. Setu's API allows customers to open FDs of up to Rs 1 lakh offering an interest rate of 6.85 percent in under two minutes through the Google Pay app.
Setu is working on growing this offering across payment apps and in collaboration with more banks. But Kini also wants to take this a step further with a daily savings product. His inspiration comes from the erstwhile Syndicate Bank's Pigmy Deposit Scheme, under which bank agents went door to door to collect money from customers and deposit it in a recurring deposit account. This was aimed at encouraging savings among daily wage earners, farmers, and traders to save every day and eventually fund their larger plans.
In a conversation with Moneycontrol, Kini said, "A digital Pigmy will allow customers to set a particular amount that can be deducted from their earnings every day and deposited into a daily recurring deposit account."
"We are working towards the product. This could have strong use cases in payroll processing and for gig economy employees. It will encourage good fiscal behaviour," he added.
On the Equitas Small Finance Bank FD, Kini said that it has seen a tremendous response within a few days of its launch. "We have booked hundreds of FDs already within these couple of days. A lot of banks too have reached out to us to offer this product. But this is just the beginning for us," he said.
After Equitas, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank too will go live on Google Pay. Kini added that it is not just small banks that will adopt this offering and that we are likely to see larger banks offering FDs via payment apps too. While he did not divulge details, Kini said that other companies too are working to make this product available on their apps.
"The future is to remove all kinds of friction in doing daily savings. Eventually, customers will be able to set up an FD of their choice with the bank of their choice," he said.
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