Paytm Appoints Former RBI Exec Shinjini Kumar As Its Payments Bank CEO

Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive, Shinjini Kumar, currently director at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), will join Paytm’s payments bank as chief executive officer.

She is expected to join in March and will look at all the aspects of the business from revenue to regulatory issues. She will also be responsible for building a team of 2500 elective members. According to the people familiar with the development, her appointment is yet to be approved by the Reserve Bank of India.

Mobile wallet and ecommerce company, Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd), received RBI’s nod to set up a payments bank last year. While Paytm was expected to launch the bank by April 2016, the plan was delayed and it is now looking to launch around the second half of this year.

In a recent report, Paytm’s CEO and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said, “The wallet will become a bank account, which will act a savings account, and can be invested in market funds and higher-yield products.”

According to Shinjini’s Linkedin profile, she has been a partner and leader of the banking and capital markets practice at PwC. She has served as deputy general manager at the central bank for 15 years before she moved to Bank of America as its country compliance head. During her stint at RBI she handled issues related to foreign direct investments, technology transfer, trade payments, overseas investments and external commercial borrowings.

Apart from Paytm, the others who got licences in August, 2015 include Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd, Airtel M Commerce Services Ltd (a part of India’s largest telecom company Bharti Airtel Ltd), Cholamandalam Distribution Services Ltd, Department of Posts, FINO PayTech Ltd, National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Tech Mahindra Ltd, Vodafone M-Pesa Ltd (a unit of telco Vodafone India Ltd), and Dilip Sanghvi (founder of Sun Pharmaceuticals Ltd).

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