Technology majors Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Fidelity Information Services are in the race for a massive contract to lay the technology backbone for the department of posts’ payment bank. The India Post Payments Bank project is estimated at Rs 700-800 crore, officials said.India Post is expected to open the financial bids for the contract in the next few days and pick a winner after these two firms qualified in the technical rounds, they said.
According to an official aware of the development, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has bid along with Indian IT major Infosys, which has in-house core banking software Finacle. Fidelity Information Services (FIS) has bid with its own banking software, the person said.
Digital payment and e-commerce player Paytm has already opted for Infosys’ Finacle to power its upcoming payment bank. India Post’s contract is the latest in a number of large technology contracts following the Reserve Bank of India’s decision to give payment bank licenses to 11 firms.
ET had reported in October that the posts department, which is racing against time to ready India Post Payments Bank, has had to re-tender its technology contract after its first tender received only one bid, from Polaris India.
This prompted India Post to tweak some of the regressive clauses in the tender concerning intellectual property rights, cash flow and payment terms, and come out with a fresh tender.
“After India Post tweaked the contract, it made business sense because of which companies were willing to participate,” said the official cited earlier.
Besides HPE and Fidelity, Tata Consultancy Services too was said to be in the race for the India Post project. FIS did not comment on ET's query. In an emailed statement, HPE said it does not comment on rumour or speculation in the market.
India Post Payments Bank will follow a bottoms-up approach, targeting around 500 million people who have feature phones and around 350 million who have no mobile at all, its chief executive AP Singh had told ET earlier.
The bank has already started pilots in Ranchi and Raipur, and the idea is to have a office in every district of the country. Singh had said that by September, he hoped to start operations in at least 650 districts of the country.
“Something that others are not doing but might emerge as our USP is door-todoor banking with the help of the postman. Plus, simplified payment solutions for the masses is what we will be targeting,” he had said.
India Post also plans to make the 12-digit Aadhaar number as a single point payment address. It proposes that over 112 crore Indians who have an Aadhaar number till now will be able to transact -send and receive money - only on the basis of the unique identification number, irrespective of the fact whether it is linked to a bank account or not.
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