Payments bank license to promote massive digital transactions: Mukesh Ambani

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani on Friday said the payments bank license issued to its joint venture with the State Bank of India (SBI) will promote massive adoption of digital transactions with low cost access.

"The payments bank is integral to RIL's digital initiative in a rapidly converging world of telecom, internet, commerce, media and financial services. This is one of our many initiatives to contribute meaningfully to the government of India's ambitious Digital India programme," said Ambani in a statement.

RIL said the payments bank will function in conjunction with JioMoney, a prepaid payment instrument of Reliance Jio, to facilitate cashless payments across multiple-use cases and build India's largest digital merchant network.

RIL and SBI applied for payments bank license in which RIL is the promoter and SBI the joint venture partner with an equity investment of up to 30 percent.

SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said the partnership is the "first-of-its-kind public private partnership (PPP) to make India's financial services digitally smart".

"SBI's vast experience in structuring financial products for different customer segments will be combined with the digital access provided by RIL in completing the most efficient, simple and affordable delivery model with utmost focus on financial inclusion," the statement cited her as saying.

On Wednesday, the Reserve Bank of India granted payments banks license to 11 entities - Aditya Birla Nuvo, Airtel M Commerce Services, Cholamandalam Distribution Services, Department of Posts, Fino PayTech, National Securities Depository Ltd, RIL, Dilip Shantilal Shangvi of Sun Pharma (who applied in personal capacity), Vijay Sekhar Sharma, Tech Mahindra and Vodafone M-Pesa - saying these had the reach and technological and financial strength to serve the numerous excluded customers across the nation.