The Digital Fifth Newsletter

There has been talk for quite some time that small banks are in great position to transform themselves into BAAS and add this as model for business acquisition; but are they really transitioning to.

Industry have been adapting to BAAS models, and typically involve third party platforms building banking APIs stack.?These BAAS players tie up with Banks and integrate their services through API led infrastructure and make these services available to third parties. With wider adoption of Open Banking and emerging business around Embedded Finance, time is right for Banks themselves to transform as BAAS platform and enable faster, quicker integration with Fintechs for business expansion.

This space could be heating up with more use cases around BAAS.

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RBI proposes linking credit cards to UPI payments

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed to allow the linking of credit cards to the UPI platform, Governor Das said on Wednesday as he announced a rate hike. To begin with, the Rupay credit cards will be linked to the UPI platform, which will provide additional convenience to the users and enhance the scope of digital payments, Das said. At present, UPI facilitates transactions by linking savings or current accounts through users' debit cards.

Source: Economic Times

SBI to focus on digital agenda; partner with fintech firms, NBFCs to drive growth

State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday said it will endeavour to accelerate its digital agenda and forge partnerships with fintech firms and NBFCs to drive its business growth. Overall FY22 has been a much better year compared to the previous year as the pace of economic activity picked up, SBI chairman Dinesh Khara said. The momentum is expected to continue, he said, adding opening up of the economy has reduced the need for a fresh stimulus package and the current momentum appears sustainable. Thus, for the bank. It is imperative that the business keeps adapting to the new operating environment, he said in his letter to shareholders published in the annual report for FY22.

Source: ETBFSI

Fintech Kissht raises $80 million to enhance product offerings

Fintech startup Kissht has raised $80 million in a funding round led by Vertex Growth and Brunei Investment Agency as the Mumbai-based company looks to enhance its product offerings.?Existing investors Vertex Ventures SEA and India and Endiya Partners also participated in the current round, Kissht said in a statement on June 8. The company said it will foray into credit-backed cards.?Kissht?also launched a millennial-focused, fully digital credit and payments app called Ring. Kissht said it aims to make Ring a brand that appeals to young, aspirational millennials who have a credit card penetration of 2 percent.

Source: MoneyControl

Founded in 2021 by?Mahin Gupta, Liminal offers a simple and efficient way to secure digital assets. Its automated wallet solution makes it easier for crypto-native businesses, SMEs and Web3 startups to manage their workflows across different blockchain protocols, saving them significant development cost overhead.

Source: Fintech Magazine

Sharing our journey of setting up an Indian Consulting Firm

During the past 5 years, we have worked across Early Stage Startups, Unicorns, Tech Giants, Product Companies, Banks, NBFC, Wealth Firms and Investors. This has been an amazing journey setting up India's First Fintech Consulting Firm with a fair share of successes and failures.

During a series of posts, I will share our experience with complete transparency and frankness.

What has kept us going?

- Extraordinary Success of our consulting customers: We have worked across the widest of areas like the Launch of new products, Creation of a New Business Model, Investment, Fund Raise, Acquisition, Partnership. Our customers have come with unique challenges and we have solved them in practical / simpler way with no time wasted on "good looking decks". 100% of our customers are our reference customers and they continue to engage with us through the lifecycle.

- Market Changing Training Participants: Our training participants have become founders (the number keeps increasing by the day), investors, digital transformation leaders, digital product managers, CXOs. Our 4500 trainees have been supporting and pushing us to build better content & delivery for our trainings. Our trainings are largely built on our market knowledge and consulting experience, which differentiate us from being the larger institutions. We have now setup Edtech Platform as well as Hiring Practice to support our Clients and Training Participants.

- Supportive Ecosystem: From the day I started as an individual to now (with a small focused team of 16), we have been trusted and supported by Fintech founders, Bankers, Tech Giants. We have been lucky.

- Driven Team: Ours is a classic case of "David" Vs "Goliath", wherein our competitors are atleast 100 times bigger than us. We have been able to compete with them with just a handful team members, who are of the mission of "changing the way money moves". We have been lucky again.

- My friends & cofounders:?Sreekant Rudrabhatla?and?Shashank Shekhar?have been leading the business with finesse. I have been lucky to get my friends as cofounders. While we have our own share of professional fights, our friendship has made things simpler.

- Our families: While we create our own space in the world, our families have been sacrificing a lot for us. Whenever I have felt low, my family has pulled me back.

Sameer Singh Jaini

Founder & CEO

The Digital Fifth