Fino Paytech plans payments bank launch within two months

Fino Paytech is seeking help from ICICI Bank to set up its payments bank venture and is aiming to launch the new entity within two months, a top official said.

"We are aiming to launch payments bank in one-and-a- half to two months. We're taking assistance from ICICI Bank for setting up the bank," chief executive Rishi Gupta told PTI.

The ICICI Group owns a 20 per cent stake in the bank.

Fino, a banking correspondent company which received the final nod from the Reserve Bank last month, needs one more set of internal approvals before launching the operations which include one from the board for operationalising, he said.

Apart from the internal nods, integration with payment systems, which will help interoperability for its customers, will take a bulk of time, Gupta said.

It is also having discussions with various companies for distribution tie-ups which will help the bank with fees.

Gupta said his company has received a corporate agency licence from insurance regulator Irdai and has signed up with Exide Life Insurance as the bancassurance partner.

It will also be selling life and general policies of the subsidiaries of its strategic partner ICICI group-- ICICI Lombard and ICICI Prudential, he said.

Tie-ups are being planned with non-bank finance companies for lending and cash management, Gupta said, and pointed out that partnerships with Reliance Capital and L&T Finance are being planned.

However, given the profile of its customer base, Fino is not keen on the mutual funds distribution space, Gupta said, adding however they are in talks with at least 10-15 entities for various partnerships which are on at present.

On Airtel's payments bank arm offering aggressive deposit rate of over 7 per cent, Gupta said his customer base will not be driven by returns on the transactional accounts and Fino is looking at offering 4 per cent on deposits.

He also said Fino would like the savings bank rate to come down further from 4 per cent, saying this rate has not gone down as much as the fixed deposit rate.