Fino, The People’s Bank, Hits Operational Profitability

Fino, India’s leading payments banks reported an 8 per cent reduction in net loss at Rs 623 million for the year ending March 2019. The bank posted a loss of Rs  673.43 million in the year-ago period, according to the bank’s filings with the Registrar of Companies. It announced that it turned profitable in the March quarter of the financial year 2019-20.  

In a media report, Rishi Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of Fino Payments Bank said, “With revenue of Rs 6.89 billion, we closed FY19-20 with positive EBITDA and posted a profit in Q4.”   

According to the report, the bank said it has facilitated over Rs 1000 billion worth of transactions in FY20 doubling on the previous fiscal. In terms of volume, transactions have almost doubled from 195 million in FY18-19 to over 380 million in FY 19-20.  

The report also said that Mumbai-based Fino has increased its savings and current accounts base by 65 per cent last year out of which 50 per cent of its customers being tech-savvy. 

It saw seen as the top- five players in the IMPS business when the bank’s domestic remittance transactions accounted for over 40 per cent of the FY 19-20 throughout. 

At present, Fino works with more than 50 API or application programming interface partners that have a collective network of 2 lakh banking points directly with 80 per cent of them being in rural areas. Fino plans to increase the network to 10 lakh outlets over the next 24-30 months, to further improve banking services. 

The operational profitability for the bank comes at a time when the digital payments bank ecosystem is struggling to sustain in the current challenging market and economic conditions. These banks have also been questioned for their business model time and again.  

Also, following the development, Fino has become the second payment bank after Paytm Payments Bank to achieve profitability. The Alibaba-backed firm made a profit of Rs 19 crore during the period with net revenue jumped 2.3 folds to Rs 1668 crore in the last fiscal year.  

Payment banks’ aggregate losses increased 21 per cent to Rs 626.8 crore in FY19 from Rs 516 crore in the previous year. The bank’s deposit base doubled in FY19 to Rs 883 crore from Rs 438 crore in FY18. 

More people are embracing digital banking and thus there is a surge expected in the transaction numbers for these payments banks, amidst the COVID-19 lockdown. 

Recently, Paytm Payments Bank has announced that it has recorded Rs 1000 crore in deposits with over 5.7 crore or 57 million saving account holders.  

Currently, out of eleven payments banks, only five (Paytm, Airtel, Fino, Jio, and India Posts) are operational.