Paytm CEO ‎Vijay Shekhar Sharma to Chair Payments Banks Group at IAMAI

Industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) has appointed Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, as the chairman of the newly formed Payments Banks Group at IAMAI. Vodafone India business head (M-Pesa) Suresh Sethi, will be the Vice-Chairman of the Group.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) was established in 2004. It is a professional industry body representing the online and mobile VAS industry in India.

In the last 12 years, it has come to effectively address the challenges facing the digital and online industry including mobile content and services, online publishing, mobile advertising, online advertising, ecommerce and mobile & digital payments among others.

Talking about the development, Vijay Shekhar Sharma said: “Payments Banks is an innovative model of bringing unbanked population into the formal banking fold. Paytm along with other license holders, would make financial services accessible for every Indian through this innovative route.”

Currently, 6 out of the 10 payments banks’ primary licensees are IAMAI members. According to Dr. Subho Ray, President, IAMAI, the other four primary licensees have in principal agreed to join when they are in operation.

In addition, IAMAI has more than 50 companies representing PPIs, Wallets, Aggregators, Business Correspondents, PoS Operators among others as members.

Earlier in April 2015 Mcommerce company, Paytm received license from the Reserve Bank of India to set up a payments bank. Later in February 2016 reports surfaced that former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) executive, Shinjini Kumar, director at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), will be appointed Paytm’s payments bank as chief executive officer.

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).

Prior to this in January 2016, IAMAI appointed digital payments platform FreeCharge’s co-founder Kunal Shah as its new chairman. He replaced Nishant Rao, the ex-managing director of LinkedIn, who recently moved to Freshdesk as the global Chief Operating Officer. Besides, IAMAI also named Vishwas Patel, CEO of CCAvenue as the new treasurer.

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