After the launch of Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm Payments Bank among others, it now seems that Jio Payments Bank is also gearing up to launch its services in India.
According to the latest information, Jio Payments Bank, which is a 70:30 joint venture between Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and State Bank of India (SBI), will start operations in December this year.
One of the three persons aware of the matter said to LiveMint:
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.
The report suggests that the launch of this payment bank service was expected to take place in this month, i.e. October. However, due to the high demand of its 4G feature phone, the company delayed the launch of payments bank to December.
Another reason for delaying the launch is to ensure the secured working of the platform. A Jio official said,
RBI wanted to be sure that the payments bank is fully compliant with all the regulations and is able to service its customers efficiently. The demonstrations are being made to assure the regulator that the standards of customer service will be sustainably maintained.
SBI will now leverage Reliance Jio’s network to reach the last-mile customers. Jio Payments Bank will work as a business correspondent for SBI. With this launch, the state-owned bank will get immediate access to Jio customers in unbanked rural areas.
In turn, Reliance Jio will also be able to expand its customer base through SBI. It is also being said that banking is not the main focus of Reliance Jio as is just looking to expand its user base.
As of April, SBI had a customer base of 420 million. On the other hand, Reliance Jio, which started operations in September last year, had 129 million customers as of 31st August.