Recently, the Reserve Bank of India has begun licensing a new kind of retail bank, called payments banks, for the hitherto financially excluded. The regulator’s argument that technological innovation will allow payments banks to achieve a seemingly impossible trilemma of financial inclusion while still being competitive and profitable is examined. The article concludes that amelioration of this trilemma will require the regulatory orientation to fundamentally change, and for the state to provide a kind of public good to all payments banks.
