Meet the e-payment startups shortlisted at HDFC Bank's Digital Innovation Summit

Private sector lender HDFC Bank is looking to partner with fin-tech startups to further expand its services and improve customer experience.

Thirty fin-tech startups across segments such as e-payments, analytics, branch automation, fraud management and cloud computing are making their presentations at the ongoing HDFC Bank Digital Innovation Summit. The lucky winners, names of which will be announced next week, will see their solutions adopted by HDFC Bank.

"Our objective is very clearly to look at solutions that enhance our customer experience and our offering to our customers. We're only looking at a pure market-linked relationship with the fin-tech companies and some of them will be with the startups," said Nitin Chugh, country head, digital banking, HDFC Bank.

The 30 startups have been shortlisted from a pool of 105. HDFC Bank received most of its startup entries in the payments segment followed by mobile innovation, analytics and cloud computing.

Chugh cited a McKinsey report which revealed that out of a sample size of 350 fintech startups, 47 per cent are focused on payments, while 20-22 per cent of business occurs in the retail lending segment.

A similar trend is also seen in India. Hence, HDFC Bank has focused 40 per cent of its fintech initiatives – Chillr, PayZap, recharge and payments via mobile – in the payments space.

"Most of our high visibility initiatives have been on payments because these are day-to-day things that customers do. They need convenience around those solutions," explained Chugh.

Chugh said that HDFC Bank is not looking to make any investment in the startups that it will partner with.

Here are the payments startups that have pitched their product ideas to a senior management team from HDFC Bank:

Indiapay: This Mumbai-based startup offers a range of financial services, including payments, cheque processing, ATM services and remittance services. The company also provides a suite of fraud detection solutions called FRISK.

Noroc Solutions: Founded in 2014, Noroc's product, Binge, offers payments solutions for the food and beverage industry.

Nearex: Founded in December 2012, this startup offers payments solutions for small merchants through its platform Xip.

Net Vigil: This startup offers mobile payments, mobile-based customer loyalty, telecom and digital security services.

Micro ATM: Operated by Mobileware Technologies Pvt Ltd, Mirco ATM offer mobile-based banking services to people in rural and semi-urban areas.

Easypay: This California headquartered startup helps customers of financial institutions secure their transactions. Easypay's platform helps banks validate the proximity of customers at the point of transaction.

Kyash: This startup offers an automated platform for businesses to collect cash payments from their customers. The firm has launched an app, Market Pulse, which is offered on a subscription basis to businesses.

Geniocode: This startup provides a number of financial services through its app. Users can deposit cheques and pay bills, and banks can decode forms. Besides this, Geniocode also provides face recognition technology for ATM transactions.