Asit Oberoi, senior group president & global head of transaction banking group at Yes Bank, speaks on new age technologies and transaction banking:
Yes Bank pioneered ‘API Banking’ in India. It launched API-based transaction banking services to corporate clients, which facilitated open banking and neo banking projects in the country. The bank is now leveraging on its leadership in the API-based transaction processing space to the nascent but vibrant open banking fintech ecosystem to enable a ‘banking-as-a-service’ model. The bank has recently introduced an online marketplace, where startups from several sectors can pitch tools integrated with the bank’s APIs. The bank has also launched ‘YES Fintech Developer Portal’, an API sandbox with 50+ virtual APIs. The sandbox builds on the bank’s strategy of using API banking as an enabler to customize digital solutions for its clients. The sandbox help corporates, MSMEs and startups to identify ‘best-fit’ APIs and allows them to test the APIs with their app in a secure environment.
Ravi Lalwani: What are the key initiatives of Yes Bank in transaction banking?
Asit Oberoi: Yes Bank is keenly focused on transaction banking as a means to enhance its granular liabilities portfolio. We have been partnering with fintechs and neo banking projects to reach out to a wider set of customers and client segments. The endeavor of these partnerships is to create win-win scenarios for both the parties. We were the first bank in India to launch API banking as a channel; we have 1200+ clients using our APIs. On the back of the partnerships that we have established, we intend to onboard the next 1000 customers in a fraction of the time it had taken us to acquire the first lot. We are also constantly scanning the ecosystem for opportunities to enhance our offerings, any means that can make our customers use traditional TBG products faster, online or paperless is of interest to us. We are experimenting with Blockchain- and ML-based projects to see if these can be launched at scale in the market. Partnerships with fintechs will take transaction banking to its next level.
Which segments do you expect to grow in transactional banking?
We are seeing significant growth in the SME, education, FMCG and healthcare sectors for transaction banking. Wherever you add value to the client and make life easier for the end customer, you see growth. Government business has traditionally been a huge contributor to our business mix and continues to be one of our key focus areas. Similarly, transactional business around capital markets (IPA, escrow, custody etc) are areas of growth for the Transaction Banking Group. On the digital front, we see new age industries like eCommerce and neo banking projects such as ERPs, payment aggregators etc creating a niche space for themselves.
Which are the key API banking initiatives you have taken up?
API-based solutions were first offered by us in September 2015. It helped us resolve the issue of refund payments for Snapdeal. Our solutioning and API-based delivery ensured that they were able to bring down the refund TAT from the earlier 7 days to a few hours. Our API solutions are predicated around use cases that require instant gratification (refunds, incentive/commission payouts, instant redemptions, OTC loan disbursement, wallet loading, cash & carry receivables management etc), curated reconciliation (validation-based receivables management) and realtime financing (vendor & dealer). These are great value-adds from customers, scalability and risk management perspectives, and it creates ultimate productivity for the companies. These solutions have enabled us to be perceived as not just an operational efficiency contributor but as a bank that enables clients to be more competitive in their respective industries by ensuring end customer delight.
Is blockchain the technology for the future? How is Yes Bank using blockchain to enhance services to its customers?
As a bank, we always innovate and we are quite bullish on blockchain technology. We did an IPA (CP issuance) with Vedanta through blockchain. We believe blockchain is the technology for the future. We will continue to partner with fintechs, as there is a good opportunity in those partnerships to take transaction banking to its next level.
