Indian digital payments firm Paytm, which is backed by Asian technology giants SoftBank Corp and Alibaba Group Holding, launched a niche bank on Tuesday, part of a plan to more than double its customer base to 500 million in the next three years.Paytm Payments Bank will help the firm reach tens of millions of Indians who use mobile phones and cheap data services in the world\u2019s fastest-growing internet services market but do not have access to the formal banking sector.<\/p>\n
The payments bank will open 31 branches and 3,000 customer points in its first year, the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n
A payments bank is an institution that can take deposits and remittances but cannot lend.<\/p>\n
Paytm became a household name across India after New Delhi\u2019s shock move to ban high-value currency notes late last year resulted in a cash crunch and boosted the use of its electronic wallet.<\/p>\n
Paytm says more than 220 million clients use its e-wallet.<\/p>\n
Its success has attracted deep-pocketed investors such as Japan\u2019s SoftBank, which last week invested $1.4 billion in Paytm parent One97 Communications.<\/p>\n
The firm\u2019s digital wallets will fold into its payment bank.<\/p>\n
The bank will offer an interest of 4 per cent a year on savings accounts and also provide current account facility to merchants.<\/p>\n
It will have no minimum balance requirements and all online transactions will be free, the company said.<\/p>\n
The bank accounts will initially be available only through an invite.<\/p>\n
Chairman Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who owns a majority stake in the banking firm, said Paytm Payments Bank will invest its deposits in government bonds.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of our deposits will be converted into risky assets,\u201d Sharma said in the statement.<\/p>\n
In 2015, India\u2019s central bank gave preliminary approval to 11 entities including Reliance Industries and the country\u2019s top three telecom operators to set up payments banks.<\/p>\n
Bharti Airtel and the Indian government\u2019s postal service have already launched payments banks.<\/p>\n
IANS<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture source: Alamy<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Picture used for illustrative purposes alone<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Indian digital payments firm Paytm, which is backed by Asian technology giants SoftBank Corp and Alibaba Group Holding, launched a niche bank on Tuesday, part of a plan to more than double its customer base to 500 million in the next three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4338,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4336\/revisions\/4338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}