“Sarvatra provided the entire infrastructure required for a bank to centralize its system” – By, Mr. Mandar Agashe , Sarvatra Technologies – leading Banking and Payments solutions provider

1. Please share some of the key milestones that company has achieved till now?

Sarvatra Technologies today is a leading end-to-end solution provider for the urban, semi-urban and rural banking sectors that has always strived to stay ahead on the technology curve. In 2010, we became the first ASP in India to go live with NPCI and offer EFT Switching services on a shared basis to our client banks. We continued offering latest services and innovative solutions to our clientele and helped them adopt the trending digital payment solutions like e-commerce and mobile banking solutions to keep their end customers satisfied. We have always embraced new technologies and, as we go on towards the future, we intend to exploit the full potential of new technologies to empower our clientele.

Some of our achievements are:

• India’s first ASP certified by NPCI to provide switch-to-switch connectivity under sub-membership model for nationwide connectivity through NFS’ ATM and IMPS network.

• India’s first ASP to get a sub-member bank live on IMPS, RuPay Debit, VAS, and RuPay E-com. Sarvatra has been a pioneer in developing payment solutions on NPCI platform.

• Leadership position with 54% market share in RuPay NFS sub-membership. 

• We enable modern switching and payment services for 500+ banks across 27 States and 3 Union Territories in India. 

• We have issued 1.5+ Crore Debit Cards and manage over 2 Lakh transactions per day. 

• Singlehandedly issued 1 crore debit cards to KCC (Kisan Credit Card) customers, achieving 1/3rd of the 3 crores national target set by India’s PM Mr. Narendra Modi, in his New Year’s Eve speech on 31st December 2016.
  
• Award-winning deployment ofIMPS Switch for ICICI Bank, one of India’s largest private banks. This Switch is integrated with all existing channels of the bank and enables significant revenue generation and cost savings for the bank. This implementation has one of the best uptime, throughput, and reliability record in India and has been awarded by NPCI. Presently, around 30% of the national volume of IMPS transactions are handled by our switch. 

• Winner of Economic Times BFSI Innovation Tribe Award 2018 in “Technology” category for Sarvatra EFT Switch. 

• Awarded “Best Banking Tech” of the year 2019 by IAMAI(Internet And Mobile Association Of India) for Sarvatra EFT Switch.

2. You are largely seen as a technology provider to co-operative and rural banks, How do you plan change you image to – technology provider of entire banking and payments system?

Our vision has always been to become India’s premier banking technology solutions provider for banks and financial institutions across rural India by leveraging on our technological prowess and deep domain knowledge of the rural banking and finance sector and to promote inclusive banking in the underbanked population of India by providing banking solutions that ‘work for everyone, everywhere’. As such, we are quite content to be identified as the leading technology provider to co-operative and rural banks in India. It speaks volumes about Sarvatra’s unwavering commitment and focus on uplifting these banking sectors.

Nevertheless, Sarvatra’s technology prowess has already caught the attention of the entire banking industry at large. Apart from providing bleeding-edge solutions to the rural and cooperative banking sector, Sarvatra has been working with some of the top commercial banks in private and public sector in India. Our key enterprise customers include ICICI Bank (also powers Google Pay, WhatsApp Pay), Equitas Small Finance Bank, Capital Small Finance Bank, The Nainital Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, IDBI Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, and NSDL Payments Bank.

Sarvatra has a few achievements in the enterprise sector as well. Our award-winning deployment of IMPS Switch for ICICI Bank that manages 30% of the national transaction volume on IMPS is a case in point. Also, our UPI product went live in ICICI Bank and Paytm Payments Bank in 2018. Moreover, the BHIM-Aadhaar product inaugurated by PM Mr. Narendra Modi in 2017 was running on Sarvatra’s AEPS platform at ICICI Bank.

Also, now that large banks are looking to tap the potential of the semi-urban and rural markets, they can rely of Sarvatra’s rural expertise to expand their markets, which will benefit the entire banking and payments system and be a driver for Financial Inclusion in India.

3. Can you list down some the key game-changing technology that the company has introduced till now?

• “Sarvatra EFT Switch” is being offered to rural and co-operative banks as PaaS (Platform as a Service) on a shared basis, to connect them to the national payment network.
• “Sarvatra UPI App” is a white label PSP mobile application for co-operative banks that supports all UPI transactions and virtual addresses management.

• “Sarvatra CardSafe App”is a minimalistic mobile app using which customers can deactivate/activate their multiple debit cards anytime and set daily transaction limits for ATMs, E-Com, and POS terminals for each card.

• “Sarvatra miniATM”is a POS-based alternative to conventional ATMs, ideal for large scale deployment across the retail sector.

4. How is Sarvatra Technologies helping rural banks in India?

Prior to Sarvatra Technologies, possessing their own world-class Data Centre and payments infrastructure was difficult for small rural / co-operative banks due to the huge capex involved in owning and managing the required infrastructure. Sarvatra provided the entire infrastructure required for a bank to centralize its system and to participate in the national payment network as a managed service. The entire setup is managed by Sarvatra, while the operating cost is on a pay-per-use basis. This enables even the smallest rural and co-operative bank to offer modern customer facilities like RuPay Debit Cards, Mobile Banking, etc. with minimal expenditure and shortest time to go live. Thus, Sarvatra offers rural banks a new business paradigm for increasing efficiency and opening new revenue streams, lending them the ability to compete with large banks.

Some of the benefits accrued by our rural customers are:

• Advanced technology at an affordable price.
• Access to a large national network.
• Assistance / training / advice to banks on IT Infrastructure.
• Access to real time data to offer modern banking services to customers across branches affordably.
• Access to ATM/Merchant Network.
• Multiple connectivity options between branches and Data Centre.
• Easy to deploy across a wide area.
• Generates MIS.
• No special training required.
• Offers a new paradigm for increasing efficiency and new revenue streams.

5. How is the technology different in India vs. Abroad? Is our technology in demand internationally?

Internationally, banks usually buy the switch directly because they can afford it and have the technical expertise of running the same. On the other hand, in India, we have been offering a shared switch, which is completely managed by us.

Also, internationally, community banks (co-operative banks) are usually on network platforms like VISA and Mastercard, while as in India, co-operative banks are connected to the homegrown RuPay network.

Many countries are studying UPI and IMPS methodology and we have started getting enquiries from other countries like Egypt and Nigeria for similar platforms.

@Technuter.com News Service