APB bets on payments bank model for growth
PremiumAirtel Payments Bank MD and CEO Anubrata Biswas said he hopes that the RBI will allow payments banks to do micro-lending business
Airtel Payments Bank (APB), which tuned profitable in fiscal year 2022, is betting on the payments bank model to grow its business to 100 million monthly transactions over the next few years, according to its managing director and chief executive officer Anubrata Biswas.
“The Payments bank model is built on scale. Now that we have reached critical mass, we don’t require further infusion of capital. Our business plans project confident growth over the next few years built purely on the current payments bank model," said Biswas.
The bank had posted profit of ₹8.2 crore in the first quarter of this fiscal compared to ₹9 crore during fiscal year 2022. The bank currently has an annualized revenue of ₹1,139 crore in the first quarter compared to ₹941.3 crore during the fiscal year 2022.
The biggest contributor to the profit comes from its B2B business, which is helping 2,400 business partners digitize ₹5.6 trillion small ticket transactions, including remittances. Other portfolios include digital banking and financial inclusion business.
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APB has more than 0.5 million banking points across the country, which has helped it touch one in six villages across the country. Biswas said he hopes that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will allow payments banks to do micro-lending business. The payments bank industry has approached RBI with the request to let these banks give loans up to ₹1 lakh. At present, payments banks are barred from undertaking any kind of lending.
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