After disrupting the telecom and broadband industries in India, the next thrust area for Reliance in is reportedly Jio Payments Bank. But before launching the payments bank, it is leveraging its massive manpower strength of 100,000 employees to test out the business as per a Mint report. The company had followed a similar method when it had launched its mobile phone service, Jio around three years back.
Jio Payments Bank is a joint venture between State Bank of India, India’s largest public sector bank and Reliance Industries Limited, India’s largest private sector company, on a 30:70 partnership. This was one of the 8 licenses that the RBI issued, some of the others being Airtel, Paytm and Fino Payment Banks.
The terms of the licenses for operating payment banks include a ceiling of deposits accepted at Rs 100,000. There can be no loans given out; otherwise it will look similar to a savings account in any bank. The core idea behind issuing these licenses is to expand the number of people with access to a bank account.
Jio Payments Bank claims it has started running a beta version by involving the RIL employees across various locations and will be able to test out their systems and will be able to iron out the loopholes if any, before throwing it open to the public at large. It would be positioned as an omni-channel offering both online and offline.
Some of the mutually beneficial outcomes of this association between SBI and RIL are: the much advertised YONO platform of SBI has been already integrated with Reliance Jio with the My Jio app, Jio Prime, the customer loyalty programme offered by Jio will be offered to the SBI customers too and so on. Similarly, SBI Rewardz, the loyalty programme offered by SBI will also be integrated with Jio Prime.
There may be benefits to Reliance in its digital technology business in which it is quite aggressive, since SBI may offer some business to Reliance Jio to develop its communication and digital network.