INDIA POST SHORTLISTS 6 CONSULTANTS FOR PAYMENTS BANK FORAY

NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 20:  

The country’s largest postal service provider, India Post, is expected to float a request for proposal this week to select a consultant for its Postal Bank that is expected to be formed by December.

India Post has shortlisted six consultants, including EY, KPMG and McKinsey, from which it will select one firm to take care of consultancy work for the payments bank foray, a senior government official told BusinessLine. “The firms were shortlisted on October 15. The name of the one selected will go to the Public Investment Board (PIB) for approval. Then the PIB will make recommendations to the Cabinet,” a government official said.

The official said the whole project will go for Cabinet approval in November (early next month). Once that approval comes through, the company (Postal Bank) is expected to be registered as a public company in December. India Post is among the 11 successful applicants that recently got in-principle nod for payments bank licence from the Reserve Bank of India. The new registered company will be called India Post Payments Bank and will have an initial capital of ₹300 crore, higher than the minimum ₹100 crore stipulated by the RBI. The company will be based on a revenue-share model.

Once the company is set up, India Post will fully leverage the existing postal network (technology, personnel, etc) for its payments bank foray with a separate logo. The bank will undertake the following types of payments: P2P (people to people) — involving, say, remittances; C2G (citizen to government) — taxes, duties, levies, and so forth; C2B (customer to bank) — e-commerce-related payments, among others; and G2C (government to citizen) — such as direct benefits transfer payments.