Fino Paytech raises ₹400 crore war chest for its payments bank

Mumbai: January 11, 2017: Payments technology firm and soon-to-be-launched payments bank Fino Paytech today announced the completion of its ₹400 crore fund raising exercise. In the process the company has also complied with RBI’s guidelines on having majority domestic shareholding.

Earlier in July 2016 the company entered into a strategic partnership with domestic oil major Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), which acquired a 21% stake in Fino for ₹251 crore. Fino followed it up by successfully raising the remaining ₹149 crore from a group of strategic investors.

Terming the development as a big leap forward, 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.”

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.

“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 ₹150 crore. 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 Fino BPay that will facilitate cashless payments at over 12000 BPCL outlets.

About Fino Paytech:

Fino Paytech is a payments technology solutions provider to banks, financial institutions and MFIs. Together with its extensive service delivery network, Fino facilitates access to financial services to the unbanked and un-served segments of the population. It services over 28 million active banking customers spread across urban and rural areas in the country providing a range of financial services viz savings, remittance, insurance, credit etc. It is one of the recipients of in-principle approval from RBI to start a payments bank. (www.finopaytech.com)