Global banking and payment technology solutions provider Fidelity Information Services (FIS) expects Asia-Pacific to be its key growth driver in the coming years and India to be amongst the high-growth countries. New banking licences present the company with new opportunities here, maintains Gary Norcross, President and Chief Executive Officer, FIS.

The Jacksonville, Florida-based company, which has developed the payments technology solution for Bandhan Bank recorded revenue of $6.4 billion (globally) in 2014. Recently in Kolkata, Norcross spoke to BusinessLine about the Indian market, growth in the banking and payment technology segment, and hiring plans.

Edited-excerpts of the interview:

How do you see India as a market?

We are excited about India. We entered some two decades back. We started as a payments provider, moved into switching and then into maintaining ATMs. We’ve now expanded that into core processing.

We are very happy with Bharatiya Mahila Bank and now Bandhan. So, for us, India remains a very strong market. Asia’s our fastest growing market. And India is our fastest growing country within that region. We are very excited about the initiatives that the (Indian) government has announced on financial inclusion and about how our software can play a role in that.

In terms of revenue, how much does India contribute?

Globally, our revenue stands at around $6.4 billion. Twenty per cent of that comes from outside the US. That revenue has been growing at over 10 per cent the last five years. India has been a high growth country for us. But we do not disclose country-specific revenues details.

With new bank licences including differentiated ones like payments banks, what is the opportunity that you are eyeing?

It is a great opportunity for us. FIS has had a lot of success in recent times. And we will certainly compete for (getting contracts) from these companies that have got in-principle nod for setting up payments banks. Also the small bank licences are set to come up. We think we have the products that are appropriate for them as well.

FIS certainly has the scale to meet the demands and will hence compete and win as many as them as possible. We are excited not just about the new banks but also about the existing ones.

But why would any new bank opt for FIS rather than other operators?

What these new banks look for are next generation technologies, something that can be deployed at a much lower cost of ownership. And FIS has the capability to do that. Not just India, we see a lot of such new banks, called challenger banks, being launched in the UK and we have been successful with that.

We are building next-gen capabilities. We build at one time, but we deploy across thousands of institutions. We got core banking capabilities, and tremendous digital capabilities. So when you think about mobile enablement, you will see we have the capability. When you talk of the payment’s ecosystem — from card based to real time payments — we have right capability as well.

How is the ATM management system (FIS categorises it under payments business vertical) working for you? What are the plans for that segment?

We currently manage more than 10,000 ATMs in the country. And that will continue to grow. The use of white label ATMs is one more way to reach the underserved. Obviously, FIS will compete for that business. It has been growing rapidly over the last three years, and we expect that trend to continue.

What sort of growth are you targeting outside the US?

We hope to continue our double-digit growth outside the US…

So what are your hiring plans?

We look at India a bit differently (than others) and not for labour arbitrage. The aim is look for and hire financial services experts. What we do, is offer the broadest range of financial services to the industry and in order to do that we need highly-trained, well-qualified people to build, implement and operate the software. And we find India as a strong employment location for us.

My first trip to the country was in 2007, and at that point we had fewer than 3,000 employees. We now have 8,500. So you see we have consistently grown here. Recently, FIS announced its largest acquisition and that was of SunGard (another US-based company). They already have 2500 employees (in India). So naturally, that will put us over 10,000 employees.

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