Comments
In a bid to diversify its revenue streams, payment solutions company ItzCash Card plans to float a financial technology firm, start international money transfer and enter into partnerships with non-banking finance companies to disburse and collect loans on their behalf.
The Mumbai-based company, which aspires to be a payments bank when the Reserve Bank of India puts the licensing process on tap, wants to leverage the technology it has developed in the payments space.
Naveen Surya, MD, said, “We are seriously exploring floating a financial technology company. We own all the technologies to provide prepaid payment solutions. Right from any (prepaid) instrument to the entire backend, we have everything.”
The proposed technology company could undertake projects for non-conflicting clients in the banking and non-banking space, he added.
“Let us say there is a bank which has a large club as a client. Now, suppose the client wants to make the entire club cashless and give its members a single card, which, among others, can be used for payments and as an access card to the club. “So, we have designed some of these programmes. This is nothing but a processing business….I know that there are many players who want these services,” said Surya.
ItzCash Card, which is part of the Essel Group, also plans to get into the international money transfer segment soon.
“We are going to announce a partnership (for international money transfer) very soon. Currently, we are only doing domestic money transfer…Money transfer beneficiaries can walk into any of our 75,000 odd outlets to take cash,” said Surya.
The company is seeking partnerships on the credit side so that its channel partners can be financed.
“We deal with people who do not have adequate credit options. We also deal with our own channel partners, who need working capital but we don’t take any credit risk on them.
“We have been in this business for eight years. The customer data (pertaining to those who have ItzCash prepaid cards) is huge. So, a partner — it could be a non-banking finance company or a bank — can look at that data, do risk assessment and take credit exposure to these customers,” explained Surya.
In such cases, ItzCash, which has issued close to two crore pre-paid instruments of all types so far, will be responsible for loan disbursements and collections, he said, and added that his company is logging monthly transactions in the ₹1,200-1,500 crore range. Of this, nearly half is money transfer.
According to the RBI, pre-paid payment instruments (cards) are instruments that facilitate purchase of goods and services, including funds transfer, against the value stored on such instruments.
The value stored on such instruments represents the value paid for by the holders in cash, by debit to a bank account, or by credit card. The pre-paid instruments can be issued as smart cards, magnetic stripe cards, Internet accounts, Internet wallets, mobile accounts, mobile wallets, paper vouchers and any such instrument which can be used to access the pre-paid amount
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.