Fostering Rural Financial Services through Technology: The Case of FINO PayTech

Abstract

The case depicts a situation faced by a company in the business of financial inclusion services. FINO PayTech Limited (popularly known as FINO) was the first mover in the blue ocean of financial inclusion business in India. It is quoted as the world’s largest banking agent manager. Formed in Mumbai in 2006 with the mission to solve problem of financial exclusion, FINO entered the market riding on the biometric smartcard and hand held devices technology and had since grown exponentially. It served more than 64 million end customers all across India adding average of one million new customers to the formal financial system every month. FINO’s uniqueness came from factors such as diversified product offering (which ranges from savings, credit, payment services, remittances, insurance, financial literacy, and so on), a robust technology, a dedicated channel of bandhus (banking correspondents/agents) and mature processes. The top leadership envisaged that FINO could not remain limited to savings and withdrawals activity if it had to reach many more million customers. The credit and micro insurance services had to be provided at the doorstep of the people and only then could FINO possibly project itself as a multi-product delivery company and that’s the challenge management was encountering when scaling up in a constrained regulatory framework.