Page 5 - Banking Finance May 2022

BANK UPDATE

Banking

News

Regional rural banks may cial entities in the public sector, has India. The final appointments will be
identified managing directors for four notified by the government based on
be allowed to graduate as
lenders - Union Bank of India, Indian these recommendations.
SFBs Overseas Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank and

Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) should be State Bank of India. Central Banks should
given the option to graduate into The board has shortlisted A regulate cryptos
small finance banks (SFBs) in line with Manimekhalai for MD & CEO of Union Central banks across the world should
cooperative banks or be granted on- Bank of India, Ajay Kumar Srivastava for look at bringing cryptocurrencies in the
tap licenses to become SFBs, State the position of MD & CEO of Indian regulated space though non-fungible
Bank of India (SBI) Research said in its Overseas Bank and Swaroop Kumar tokens (NFT) or stable coins will not
report. "In keeping with the fast-paced
changes in the banking space and to Saha for Punjab & Sind Bank. Alok Kumar replace fiat currency, said DBS Bank
facilitate growth, a scheme for volun- Choudhary has been recommended for Group CEO Piyush Gupta during an in-
tary transition of Urban Co-operative the position of MD in the State Bank of teraction.
Banks (UCBs) into SFBs was introduced UPI lite announced for offline transactions
in September 2018.
The National Payment Corporation of India's (NPCI) Unified Payment Inter-
RRBs may also be permitted to gradu- face (UPI) has become one of the most widely accepted digital payment mode
ate into SFB in line with Cooperative because of its ease and convenience. UPI apps such as GooglePay, Phonepe,
banks or granted on-tap license to Paytm, are now ruling the online payment industry. However, NPCI now wants
RRBs to become SFBs", the report said. to make small value transactions through UPI offline. This is called 'UPI lite -
In fact, some of the large regional ru-
ral banks are bigger than the SFBs op- On-Device wallet'.
erating the market. India's largest RRB It should be noted that NPCI has not revealed any specific date for the launch
in terms of size of business - Baroda U.P. of UPI Lite. "UPI Lite will be initially launched as a pilot with multiple banks
Bank (Rs. 72,015 crore) is bigger than and app providers, and after a due comfort is achieved, the full scale com-
the largest SFB (AU SFB) - which has mercial launch with compliance timeliness for on-boarding for the issuers and
business (deposits + advances) size of app providers will be declared," NPCI added.
Rs. 70,588 crore as of March 2021.
According to NPCI, India processes one billion UPI transaction every day, and
to facilitate these growing transactions, banks have to upgrade their infra-
Bank board picks MDs for structure and this requires better technical grip and huge investments. The
four banks NPCI took charge of this problem and has designed the 'UPI lite functionality
The Banks Board Bureau, the body for UPI users. This means you can now send payments exactly how you used
which selects chief executives for finan- to do but the only difference payments under this will work offline.

BANKING FINANCE | MAY | 2022 | 5