Give us money to burn, we can build a UPI-like product: Axis Bank's Amitabh

After being chided by RBI brass for missing the UPI bus by not investing early, a top executive of Axis Bank on Thursday said banks do not have money to burn for building such businesses.

"We didn't have Rs 3,000 crore of money to make a loss on," was the quick response of Amitabh Chaudhry, the managing director and chief executive of the third largest private sector lender, when asked to comment on RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar's weekend statement.

Speaking at an event organised by brokerage Motilal Oswal, Chaudhry further said businesses like Unified Payments Interface (UPI) are loss-making and also lack cash flows, and wondered how their valuations keep going up.

Entities like Google Pay and the Walmart-backed PhonePe are pumping money into such products because they have some other business to do. The way ahead for such businesses is to either act as a distributor and collect fees, or compete with banks by getting into similar businesses, he said.

The RBI has made it clear