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Payments technology firm Fino Paytech has raised about Rs 400 crore for its soon to be launched payments bank.
The Mumbai-based company said in a statement that it has also complied with RBI’s guidelines on having majority domestic shareholding post the fund raise.
It may be noted that Fino Paytech had majority foreign shareholding at the time of receiving the in-principle approval to set up payments bank in August 2015.
In July 2016, domestic oil major Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) acquired a 21% stake in Fino for Rs 251 crores. The remaining Rs 149 crore has been raised ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and ICICI Lombard General.
The funds will be used in the launch and expansion of the payments bank, a new banking segment where in 7 other players including Paytm, Airtel and Vodafone would compete against each other for a dominant position.
Rishi Gupta, MD & CEO, Fino Paytech said, “We have always believed in strategic fitment of partners from synergy and growth perspective. After BPCL, we are pleased to have ICICI Prudential Life Insurance and ICICI Lombard General Insurance among others as strategic investors in our Payments Bank journey. With this we have also successfully reduced our foreign shareholding to less than 50%, a key RBI prerequisite. The stage is now set for the final approval from RBI.”
“As a payments bank, partnerships will be key for us. It is great to have strong partners such as ICICI Group and BPCL who believe in Fino’s business model and provide tremendous scope for innovation across offerings and distribution for the benefit of the addressable market,” added Gupta.
Prior to payments bank related developments, the last time Fino raised funds was in 2011 when Blackstone group invested Rs 150 crores. The company, which has been profitable since 2010, provides a wide range of financial and large scale enrolment services such as door step banking, biometric banking solutions, remittances, lending, insurance, PMJDY and UID enrollments and direct benefit transfer payments through over 30000 transactions points across more than 500 districts in the country. Recently, Fino launched its mobile wallet FinoBPay that will facilitate cashless payments at over 12000 BPCL outlets.
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