After launching the Jio Payments Bank, Reliance Jio will join the likes of Airtel which launched the first Payments bank in India and the recently launched Paytm Payments Bank. According to the reports, the Mukesh Ambani owned firm received in-principle approval from RBI to launch a payments bank back in August 2015. According to a report published in Mint, three people familiar with the matter told that Reliance had initially planned its launch to coincide with the delivery of its 4G-enabled Jio Phone in October. To recall, JioPhone delivery has already been started. “The payments bank was expected to launch its operations in October. The launch got delayed as the RBI had asked them (Jio Payments Bank) to demonstrate its capabilities to ensure it is ready for a glitch-free launch. The launch will now be in December,” said one of the three persons as cited by Mint. SBI will be utilizing Reliance Jio’s network to reach the remote customers. “For SBI, Jio Payments Bank will operate as a business correspondent. SBI will have immediate access to Jio customers in unbanked rural areas,” one of the persons told Mint. Reliance Jio will also be able to expand its consumer base through SBI which has more than 420 million consumers. Reliance Jio on the other hand, had about 129 million customers as of 31 August, according to a report by COAI. Now, with Payments Bank, the telecom company is planning to attract more users. To understand Payments Bank, it is a new model of banks from RBI. These are the banks which can offer Savings or Current accounts with up to Rs. 1 Lakh deposit per-user. The only limitation here is that these banks cannot issue credit cards or loans for that matter. However, they can issue services like ATM cards, debit cards, net-banking, and mobile banking.
