Kerala-headquartered Federal Bank has adopted a two-pronged strategy to seek an edge in the digital banking space.

The old-world private sector bank has set up a special team to ride the next wave of digital banking, even as it is scanning the start-up ecosystem to draw up some solutions.

“While we have very good digital orientation in products, the market doesn’t see us as a leading digital player. We are keen to ensure that customers enjoy using Federal digital services and we have an effective digital strategy in place,” Shyam Srinivasan, Managing Director, Federal Bank, told BusinessLine .

The bank has a team of eight “young and bright officers” drawn from different branches to work on digital banking solutions. “They are like my digital R&D,” he said.

Federal Bank has also launched start-up branches called Launchpad in Ernakulam and Bangalore to cater to young and budding entrepreneurs.

“On any given day, 10 people are walking into our Launchpad branches with new ideas. They are primarily coming for funding. But they are also offering their tech-based fin-tech solutions. So, there is full factory working on idea origination. Thus, in addition to our own team, we are also scanning the start-up environment for solutions,” said Srinivasan.

The bank has seen good progress in the digital space and it is virtually doubling its digital transactions every quarter. The bank expects to retain the momentum and come out with more number of services through its digital strategy.

“We enable every payment option on the mobile. Our general belief is that as we get better and better at this, we hope to emerge as a dominant player in the space,” he added.

However, since the bank has a large number of old customers, it expects them to do branch banking too. “Our theme is ‘Digital at the fore, Human at the core’,” he added,

Last year, Federal Bank launched FedBook Selfie, India’s first Mobile App for bank account opening. It has other popular digital solutions such as missed call banking, mobile recharges and fund transfers, among others.

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