The Reserve Bank is hopeful of issuing small and payment banks licences by the end of the calender year, central bank Deputy Governor S S Mundra said today.
"We expect that it (issuing payment and small bank licences) should happen during the course of this year. Both are work in progress and hopefully both should happen in the course of this calendar year," Mundra, who is in-charge of banking supervision at RBI, told reporters here.
It can be noted that early February as many 74 companies/entities/individuals have applied for licences to set up small banks and payments banks.
The move to allow such differentiated banks came after the RBI had found just two entities - the infra player IDFC and the micro-lender Bandhan from among over two dozen applicants-eligible for setting up commercial banks.
The RBI issued this limited set of licences in April 1, 2014, after a decade. Both the applicants are yet to begin their operations even after a year as they have time till October.
During that time, Governor Rajan had said that others could apply for small and payments banks and that going forward bank licences will be issued on-tap.
