Paytm unveils Payments Bank, with data science at the core

[caption id="attachment_15134" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma[/caption] Paytm Payments Bank kick-started a new kind of banking model, one of the first of its kind on May 23.  It is India’s first bank with zero fee on online transactions, no minimum balance and free virtual debit card. Spearheaded by Renu Satti, CEO, the bank has a zero balance requirement and offers all sorts of online transactions – NEFT, RTGS and IMPS. Currently, the bank offers an interest of 4% per annum on savings accounts. Paytm, the king of cashbacks also announced that the first one million customers to open a payments bank account and reach a deposit of INR 25,000 can avail a cashback of INR 250. The bank has plans to expand to 31 branches and 3,000 customer service points in the first year, according to a company statement. Paytm, like any e-commerce company, has lots of data to process, moving data across different systems of varying complexity. To spruce up for the smooth rollout of Paytm Payments bank, the mobile wallet company appointed Amit Singhal, a Google veteran and former head of Google Search. News reports suggest the top end hire was made to tap into Singhal’s strong expertise in AI. The technical end of the Paytm Payments bank is handled Wipro that provides the technological infrastructure and also supports other core features like regulatory reporting solutions and anti-money laundering. In addition this, Wipro also manages the data centres for Paytm’s Payment bank and supports fraud-detection applications.  Up next, the ambitious company led by Vijay Shekhar is also planning to launch a Debit Card with QR code for the people who don’t carry a smartphone.

Role of data in cross-selling

According to a Deloitte study, mobile based banks such as Payments Bank can extend the value proposition for customers by gleaning insights from customer data to recommend best services, products and cross-sell financial and nonfinancial products.  It can also pivot to a one-stop-shop for all bill payments, wealth advisory, transfer of payments and credit investment thereby eliminating the need for third-party players. Much of the heavy lifting here will be done by predictive analytics to predict user behavior. The Payments Banks has leveraged analytics to drive targeted customer acquisition, build credit score models and reach last mile customers.