MeitY sets digital transactions target for online payment banks, monitors progress to boost culture

In order to promote digital banking culture in the country, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has set digital transactions target for online payment banks. Paytm Payments Bank (PPB) has received a target of 501.16 digital transactions from the MeitY for FY20, only behind State Bank of India, which has the highest target for digital transactions. Only five other banks have received a target of more than 100 crore transactions - HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Punjab National Bank and Union Bank of India. 

Ravi Shankar Prasad has been assigned as the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology by the Modi 2.0 government after winning Lok Sabha elections this year. The growing dependency on smartphones and internet is setting new standards for digital banking with lots of players in the sector. As it is easy and convenient to do bank related things on internet, the government is ensuring the development in the same.

In FY ’19, PPB managed to achieve its target of 354 crore digital transactions and registered 393 crore digital transactions to emerge as the second-largest player in the entire banking industry in India. Both in terms of mobile banking and UPI transactions, PPB is has a market share of 19% and 32% respectively. With nearly one third of the total mobile banking transactions in India PPB processes over Rs 3 Lakh Crore worth of digital transactions on an annualized basis.

PPB is India’s first Payments Bank to have turned profitable within its second year of operation, reporting a profit of Rs 19 crores for the FY ’19. As of April 2019, PPB has more than Rs 500 crore deposits in our savings account, which makes it the largest payments bank in India in terms of deposits. The bank is aiming to introduce more products and features to increase the monthly processing of savings account payments from Rs 24,000 crores to Rs 40,000 crores in FY '20. 

To promote digital transactions in India, MeitY has set the target for all banks and closely monitoring the progress on it. This target is significant and is much higher than the target set for major banks like HDFC, ICICI and Punjab National Bank.