Nearly 72% of financial transactions of Public Sector Banks (PSBs) done through digital channels

Customers active on digital channels doubled from 3.4 crore in FY2019-20 to 7.6 crore in FY2020-21

Nearly 72% of financial transactions of Public Sector Banks (PSBs) are now done through digital channels, with customers active on digital channels having doubled from 3.4 crore in FY2019-20 to 7.6 crore in FY2020-21. This was stated by Union Minister of State for Finance Dr Bhagwat Kisanrao Karad in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

The Minister stated, however, that the license for banking is given by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and RBI has informed that it is not considering a separate licensing category for digital banks at present.

The Minister further enumerated a number of steps that have been taken to facilitate digital banking including, inter-alia: -

(1) Under the Public Sector Banks (PSB) EASE Reforms Agenda,-

(i) Enhanced access to mobile banking and Internet banking has been enabled through an increase in the PSB average for the number of services offered (43), customer-friendly features (135) and regional languages available on the customer interface (8);

(ii) End-to-end automated digital lending has been introduced in larger PSBs for unsecured personal loans (in five PSBs), loans to micro-enterprises (“Shishu Mudra”, in five PSBs) and renewals of loans to micro, small and medium enterprises (in three PSBs);

(iii) Digital retail loan request initiation through digital channels has been enabled in all the seven large PSBs, with retail disbursements from loan requests so initiated in the financial year (FY) 2020-21 amounting to ₹ 40,819 crore;

(iv) Customer-need-driven, analytics-based credit offers have been given an impetus, resulting in ₹ 49,777 crore of fresh retail loan disbursements by the seven larger PSBs in FY2020-21.

(2) Government’s Jeevan Pramaan initiative for pensioners has enabled pensioners the facility to update their annual life certificate online.

(3) Initiation of digital lending has been made contactless through PSBloansin59minutes.com, using triangulation of credit bureau, income-tax and goods and services tax (GST) data, to provide online in principle approval for loans to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), home loans, personal loans and automobile loans.

(4) Online bill discounting for MSMEs has been enabled on a competitive basis through onboarding of PSBs onto the Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) platform.

Digital banking adoption rises while bank licensing remains the central bank's prerogative without a separate digital category. Public sector banks now conduct the majority of transactions through digital channels while the Reserve Bank of India retains sole authority on banking licences and is not considering a separate digital bank category. Under PSB EASE Reforms, mobile and internet banking services, customer features and regional language interfaces have been expanded; end to end automated digital lending and digital retail loan initiation have been enabled in larger PSBs; analytics based credit offers and substantial digital disbursements have been supported. Additional measures include online life certification for pensioners, contactless loan approval via data triangulation, and PSB onboarding onto the TReDS platform for MSME bill discounting.