Aditya Birla shuts down payments bank ops

The Aditya Birla group has shut down the operations of its payments bank, in just one and a half year after its operations commenced.

“We will be restricting any further credits (add money) to your account from July 26, 2019,” the bank says in a note to customers, adding that “full and complete arrangements” have been made for the return of all deposits.

Aditya Birla was one of the 11 applicants that were granted “in-principle” licenses by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2015. They were given a timeline of 18 months to meet regulatory requirements and receive final licenses for launching payments bank. RBI gave out final licenses to seven of them, including Aditya Birla Group.

In April 2016, telecom player Idea Cellular merged its subsidiary Idea Mobile Commerce Services with the payments bank to form Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank that launched its operations on February 22, 2018.

Aditya Birla Nuvo, now Grasim Industries, held 51% stake in the company.

"This decision has been taken due to unanticipated developments in the business landscape that have made the economic model unviable," the company said in filing to BSE.

The sources suggest a lack of resources in sustaining the payments bank operations led the company to wind up its operations.