Fino Payments Bank - Introduction

Continuing my previous article on payments bank or pBank, let me introduce to Fino Payments Bank. India has got its 4th payments bank or simply pBank as Fino Payments Bank has started their operations since 17th of July 2017.

Relatively lesser known Fino Paytech Limited kickstarted their payments bank journey with 410 branches across the country. Fino is in the e-payment market since 2006 and as of now their presence are more focused to selected states - Telengana, Andra, Gujarat, Maharastra, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi - NCR, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.


Headquartered at Mumbai, Fino was mostly operational in Bihar, Maharastra, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi -NCR, Gujarat and Rajasthan as a a remittance service provider, all of their branches of Fino Money Mart are now converted into bank branches. Fino Payments Bank was Incorporated on 4th April, 2017.

image credit: http://www.finobank.com

FINO is offering 5 types of saving account - Pratham Savings Account, Saral Salary Account, Sanchay Savings Account, PMJDY Account, PMJDY Small Account.

Basic or Pratham Saving Account comes with :

• Minimum balance Rs 1000.
• Interest rate 4% on daily basis
• Offers Rupay Classic Debit Card with accidental insurance of Rs 1 lakh
• Offers BPay - app for Android and iOS. 
• Access to over 2 lakh ATMs in India with up to five free transactions per month (First 3 ATM transactions free in Metro locations (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad) and first 5 ATM transactions free in other locations).
• ICICI Bank is a partner of FINO, who will in turn offer ICICI ATMs, different ICICI products to its customers.
• FINO has partnership with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), to reshape mobile finance in India.

My take on Fino Payments Bank:

On my humble opinion, Fino knows the finance but the reach is limited. They are offering same interest of 4% like the regular bank interest on saving accounts.

Indian Post, Paytm and Airtel are currently better positioned as they can reach everywhere in India, which can be overcome by Fino in given time. But Fino as a brand is almost unknown to many states (Fino is operational in 14 states only) and many people will not go for it.

So basically Fino is not targeting urban people for sure, and once they will, they will find competition on two grounds - limited reach and brand positioning.