The Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), an arm of Reserve Bank of India, has been at the forefront of developing high end technologies for banking and financial services. It has recently set up India’s first 5G Use Cases Lab. The lab will identify India-specific use cases of 5G in the banking and financial services sector and help implement 5G technologies. In view of the significance of the new generation technology BusinessLine spoke to AS Ramasastri, Director, IDRBT on the way forward for the lab. Excerpts:

What is the relevance of 5G for emerging technologies?

Cloud Computing is becoming a new normal for organisations and technologies related to AI/ML, Blockchain, IoT, VR and AR. Digital literacy and adoption of mobiles has increased exponentially. 5G will bring the emerging technologies to the last mile with higher bandwidth, ultra-low latency, high mobility. We can see that the congruence of 5G with emerging technologies is expected to bring in the next revolution in user experience.

How do you see the relevance of 5G for Banking and Financial Services?

Banking is going to be the largest benefactor of these changes. Retail banking will certainly go through the next generation digital transformation. I am sure that sectors such as insurance, capital markets, non-banking financial companies will be immensely benefited.

In corporate/commercial banking, interaction with corporate customers will become smoother and proactive. The 5G dependent use cases will provide opportunities to newer businesses, FinTech, RegTech and other start-ups.

What does 5G Use Cases Lab mean for the sector and all other stakeholders?

The project is approved for three years to work with banking and financial services (BFS) companies, research labs, OEMs, regulators and start-ups. We plan to work with start-ups to develop and prototype 5G use cases. We also hope to build software frameworks and platforms to bring aspects of re-usability, open source/standards and reduce the development time. Banking and financial services can leverage the lab to build their own specific use cases and perform field testing.

How do you see security in the context of 5G?

Security is paramount for improving trust in banking and financial service systems. It is imperative for the banking and financial services industry to understand security in 5G so that no new challenges emerge, or a mitigation plan is designed from day one. We also plan to look at the specifications on how 5G has learnt from issues of 4G and can enhance security.

What is the IDRBT’s plan for 5G Use Cases Lab?

The vision of the lab is to enable te banking and financial services industry to excel in 5G adoption.

The expectations of the lab include developing, demonstrating and piloting 5G use cases for BFS, setting up a 5G experience lab to demonstrate use cases, identify security gaps and propose a secure 5G environment and nurture a minimum of five start-ups, enabling BFS to implement use cases.

What are the collaboration opportunities for OEM, service providers, start-ups?

We are open to collaboration with OEMs, telecom providers, R&D Labs, system integrators, start-ups and other stakeholders who are connected to 5G and emerging technologies for banking and financial services domain. IDRBT is collaborating with IIT-Hyderabad on setting up a 5G test bed. Apart from banks, we are also working with a few start-ups.