HDFC Bank, ICICI, others in MeitY’s digital good books

BENGALURU: HDFC Bank and Paytm Payments Bank are among seven financial institutions that have topped the rankings in the number of digital transactions reported in July.
The government is tracking the numbers as part of its agenda to achieve 40 billion digital transactions in the current financial year. HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank among traditional lenders, Paytm and Fino among payment banks, and Canara Bank and IDBI Bank among the public sector entities have been rated ‘good’ on a list by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). HSBC is the only foreign bank to figure in the top seven. In June, HDFC Bank and Fino were the only ones to get a ‘good’ rating from the ministry.

MeitY comes out with a monthly scorecard for banks. The scores are calculated using factors such as the number of digital transactions, share of successful transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) railroads and number of merchants onboarded for digital payments. The result sheet is shared with banks. ET has seen a copy of the scorecard.

HDFC Bank, which has received the highest score of 71, reported 110% achievement of its target set for the month, while Fino with a score of 70, reported 196% achievement of the target, as per the scorecard. Paytm was a turnaround story in July, climbing to the third position with a score of 69, and 102% in terms of the digital payments target and full achievement of merchant deployment targets. Paytm was ranked 26 in June. In absolute numbers, Paytm has reported the highest number of digital transactions among all banks.

A Paytm Payments Bank spokesperson said the firm has set a target of 5 billion digital transactions for the year, but it has already recorded 1.3 billion transactions in the first three months of the year. The bank has also onboarded almost 1 million rural merchants in the same period, he said. As per the MeitY scorecard, Paytm was lagging behind on the target for onboarding merchants in northeastern states, achieving only 1,257 out of the 5,20,000 target.

Paytm has displayed one of the highest rates of successful transactions in the month, with just 0.03% of the transactions on UPI being declined, among the best in the industry. For other banks at the top, the numbers are less than 1%, except for Canara Bank, which reported more than 1.4% transaction declines on UPI.

“The MeitY report of July is a reiteration of our June performance that reflects Fino’s commitment to increasing banking access in rural areas and pushing digital transactions through Micro ATM and AePS enabled strong merchant network,” said Ashish Ahuja, chief business officer, Fino Payments Bank. The bank said it had reported 18 million digital transactions in July, compared to 15 million in June. As of August,it built a merchant network of 65,000 in rural areas.