• Oberoi shares what he learned from SIBOS 2017 and the opportunities that banks should look at
• He emphasised that Yes Bank is focused on taking API banking to its next level through collaboration
• Oberoi also stated that the bank is looking to test multiple solutions, including blockchain, for high-volume payments

Here is the transcript:

Asit Oberoi: I think SIBOS, this year, was fascinating from my perspective.  A lot of good learning opportunities, met a lot of colleagues from international banks, including PSU banks. Across met a lot of technology companies, I think this year we have a lot of technology companies like Ripple, SECTRA, IBM, SWIFT is there. They were all here, and we got to spend time with each other, we got to interact with each other and a relatively more relaxed than normal and stay back home. And we could learn from each other and I was really, really, really fascinated by some of that. I think with some of the new age, technology companies there are lots we can do to partner with each other. Similarly, even with the banks, the international banks, there are multiple opportunities to partner with each other and I walk away feeling very satisfied, the four days really well spent.  

And above all, it was fascinating to see 8,000 people here at SIBOS and the project management that various to organisers have put in place, it is world class. So, I’ll break that up into a couple, let’s start with the API, we’ve as you know Boon, we’ve executed multiple APIs from multiple of our corporate you know, we’ve really done well and we’ve been doing API banking for roughly three years now and we are pioneers and setting that up in India. In talking to a lot of global banks, I found a lot of interested API solutions. I found a lot of interest in them, how YES Bank has partnered with them and you know using that for remittances coming in to India. I also found that the European banks, some of them were looking at API in a very focused manner for early next year, so that felt good that we were potentially slightly ahead of the curve there.

But, clearly each one of us felt that there were opportunities to really take API banking to its next level. So over time we would see YES Bank pretty much offering API banking to most of its corporates because of all the benefits that are there in it. We also found lot of opportunities to further collaborate with some global players on API banking, blockchain too. It is a big hot topic of discussion, there is a recessing new sign off on we trade today, which we saw it European banks partnering to use blockchain on a global supply chain kind of scenario and we’ve actually done a pilot, you see pilot with a large engine company earlier in the year. So, and we are going live with that later in the year, as well. So, we saw, we will go back and compare our solutions and we’ll see if there are opportunities to further improve our solutions. We also briefly talked to We Trade, without trade some of the people there is opportunities to bring in Asian banks like YES bank, which is new age and you know a really bright technology-orientated bank into the coalition, so to speak.    

So, there are really some good opportunities, SWIFT GPI is a hot topic today and I think we are evaluating some of those things, there’s a lot of discussions around that earlier today as well and obviously from an India perspective, we have a really smart solution called UPI which has help students on their payments and YES Bank has garnered roughly a 40% of market share in that solution. So, a lot of clients thought, and that enables a twenty-four-by-seven payments as your aware Boon, but a lot of the world are looking at some of that things. 

So, with tons of the solutions I think India and YES Bank can partner with the best of the world to take payments solutions to the next level. So, we’re looking at multiple solutions on, we are evaluating GPI, but we’re also looking at multiple solutions including blockchain for high-volume payments coming in you know FX in words coming in because as you know lots of NRIs send money into India, so that’s a very busy space and we’re looking at multiple solutions there to see how we can give a brighter experience. We are actually also, for a large number of exchange houses without naming any of them, we do use API solutions to actually transfer money into India in a seamless manner and some of them run twenty-four-by-seven using API solutions, IMPS, and we also do use APIs for you know, multiple AML checks, as well. So, we are already in that space, we have good solutions, but one of the things about YES Bank, you know we are, we call ourselves a technology company in the business of banking. So, we will constantly evaluate what we can do better and keep on sharpening our solutions into the client. We ultimately, banking is all-around client focus on customer focus so you use, look at digital from the eyes of the consumer, and if you can actually create better solutions it just takes things to the next level.