Tech Mahindra not to pursue payments bank operations

IT firm Tech Mahindra on Tuesday said that it will not pursue its plans to set up payments bank operations in the country, becoming the third player to pull out from the race.

“With reference to the earlier communication dated August 20, 2015, about the in-principle approval granted by RBI for setting up a payments bank, Board of Directors of the company have decided that the company will not pursue this opportunity,” it said in a filing to the BSE.

Sun Pharma founder Dilip Shanghvi who along with IDFC Bank and Telenor got in-principle approval from the Reserve Bank for payments bank, also pulled out of the race last week. A couple of months back, Cholamandalam group also dropped its payment bank plans.

“Over a period of time, we realised amount of aggression that has co-me to the market which only erodes the margin because it was anyway more about tra-nsactions and the volume of transactions with a razor thin margins,” C.P. Gurnani, MD, Tech Mahindra said.