NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Citibank India is in talks with digital payment companies and telecom operators to kick-start its financial tech accelerator programme.

Talking to BusinessLine on the sidelines of the Citi Mobile Challenge event here, Citi officials said the banking giant is seeking newer ways to engage with its customers and make sense of the changing dynamics in the banking sector, both in India and globally.

In line with this thought, Citibank has opened up its Application Programming Interface (API) to third party developers, similar to Google and Facebook. An API is a piece of software code that helps you to perform a task.

According to Kartik Kaushik, Country Business Manager, Consumer Banking, Citibank India, the bank is in advanced stages of talks with telcos and digital payment providers. However, he did not name the companies.

Interestingly, the development comes just days after the RBI gave licences to 11 payments banks, which includes a combination of telcos, traditional financial institutions and digital wallet companies like PayTM.