Will take 2 years before we move from a payments bank to a SFB: Rishi Gupta, Fino Payments Bank

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

«Because of the fact that we offer multiple products to our customers, our customers are largely people who are the common man of the country, people in the middle income or low middle income segment of the country,» says Rishi Gupta, Fino Payments Bank.This entire payment bank experiment of the system, you have really done a great job. Many could not. And now I was just comparing, the way you have turned this quarter, you are on route to almost Rs 80 crore of profit for the full year versus say Rs 65 crore, roughly, give or take 5% last year. We all are reading about your plans of moving into a transition, into a small finance bank. When it does actually happen, how does the profitability outlook change or improve? What meaningful change actually happens then for you? From a Fino Payments Bank point of view, we have been doing this business for the last 17 years.

Six years back, we got our license to get a payments bank. And under the payments bank model, we set up a very asset light scalable merchant ecosystem model. Now, because of the fact that we offer multiple products to our customers, our customers are largely people who are the common man of the country, people in the middle income or low middle income segment of the country.

So, we have been scaling up this business in a very cost effective, as well as focusing more on the distribution and kind of technology and partnerships, which we have built up. Coming to your question specifically on the SFB transition, we have just taken the first step. The first step is to take a board approval.

After the board approval, we will apply to RBI. Post that the RBI will look at the application and then give a view on the application. After that, there is a time of 12 to 18