Fino Payments Bank turns profitable, revenue up by 86%

Fino Payments Bank has announced that it has turned profitable at the operating level in the March quarter of the financial year 2019-20. 

While Fino’s net losses reduced by 50% for the quarter, it has posted an 86% increase in its net revenue to Rs 689 crore during FY20 from Rs 370 crore in FY19. However, the bank did not disclose its profit figures. 

“With revenue of Rs 6.89 billion, we closed FY19-20 with positive EBITDA and posted a profit in Q4,” Rishi Gupta, chief executive officer of Fino Payments Bank, was quoted as saying in a MoneyControl report. 

According to the report, the bank said it has facilitated over Rs 1000 billion worth of transactions in FY20 doubling on the previous fiscal. In terms of volume, transactions have almost doubled from 195 million in FY18-19 to over 380 million in FY 19-20. 

Mumbai-based Fino has also increased its savings and current accounts base by 65% last year out of which 50% of its customers being tech-savvy, the report said. 

The bank’s domestic remittance transactions accounted for over 40% of the FY 19-20 throughout, making it one of the top-five players in the IMPS (immediate payment service) business. 

At present, Fino works with more than 50 API or application programming interface partners that have a collective network of 2 lakh banking points directly with 80% of them being in rural areas. To further improve banking access, Fino plans to increase the network to 10 lakh outlets over the next 24-30 months.

The operational profitability for the bank comes at a time when the digital payments bank ecosystem is struggling to sustain in the current challenging market and economic conditions. These banks have also been questioned for their business model time and again. 

Also, following the development, Fino has become the second payment bank after Paytm Payments Bank to achieve profitability. The Alibaba-backed firm made a profit of Rs 19 crore during the period with net revenue jumped 2.3X to Rs 1668 crore in the last fiscal year. 

Payment banks' aggregate losses increased 21% to Rs 626.8 crore in FY19 from Rs 516 crore in the previous year. The bank’s deposit base doubled in FY19 to Rs 883 crore from Rs 438 crore in FY18.

Amidst the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are embracing digital banking and thus there is a surge expected in the transaction numbers for these payments banks.

Recently, Paytm Payments Bank has announced that it has recorded Rs 1000 crore in deposits with over 5.7 crore or 57 million saving account holders. 

Currently, out of eleven payments banks, only five (Paytm, Airtel, Fino, Jio, and India Posts) are operational.