Paytm’s payment bank to use Infosys’ Finacle software

On Thursday Paytm’s payment bank announced that it will use Infosys’s Finacle core banking software for its services. Finacle is now part of EdgeVerve, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys.

This is the first such deal for Infosys since the issue of the payment bank licence last year with the IT services company looking to close such deals with other licence winners.

Speaking on the matter, Venkatramana Gosavi, Vice-President at Infosys Finacle, said,

We are talking to the other winners. This is the first to be announced, but we are in talks with the others. The talks are in different stages.

While the partnership with Infosys only involves the core banking system, Wipro will be the system integrator for the service. Paytm will continue to develop the customer-facing mobile applications by itself.

EdgeVerve’s product factory will enable Paytm to easily create CaSa (Current Account and Savings) based products and services in addition to its existing Wallet offering. Further, the solution also will offer integration adaptors with many third party applications like Anti-Money Laundering.

According to Shinjini Kumar, CEO of Paytm Payments Bank, Paytm is likely to use a mix of third-party software and technology for other modules of the bank.

Paytm claims to currently have a user base of more than 126 million and is targeting to get half a billion Indians to use its mobile payment commerce platform and soon to be launched payment banking services.

While RBI issued 11 in-principle licenses to start payment banks in August 2015, three have reportedly pulled out. Last month, Tech Mahindra became the third licence winner to pull out. The other two are Sun Pharma promoter Dilip Shanghvi and Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company.

Shinjini said,

People dropped out because that was not their core business. For us, it is who we are and it is in our name.

She, however, stressed upon the infrastructure challenges for the company, as the payments bank will be highly reliant on mobile infrastructure for transactions.

Infosys claims Finacle is used by banks in 92 countries, with a reach of over 848 million customers.