BPCL retail outlets to market financial products

Mumbai: The state-run Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) would soon begin selling financial products, insurance and remittances from its fuel retail outlets along with its partner Fino Paytech.

BPCL brought 21% stake in Fino Paytech, a payments bank, for Rs.251 crore last week.

The state-run firm says the tie-up would not only help its spread financial inclusion, it would also help it strengthen customer loyalty, increase customers at its fuel retail outlets and increase revenue from its non-fuel segment. Fino Paytech Limited has already set up a kiosk at one of BPCL’s outlets in Nashik, Maharashtra.

“Through this tie-up we are also looking at agri and financial inclusion. We would launch this in urban as well as rural markets and in the long run this would help us strengthen our retail network and segment too,” said P. Balasubramanian, Director Finance, BPCL, over phone.

The tie-up would also help BPCL beef up its revenue from the non-fuel segment (allied services like cafes, ATMs, shopping areas etc; available at the fuel retail outlets).

Along with its fuel retail outlets, BPCL also runs its In&Out convenience stores which offers an array of services including, Cafeterias, shopping areas, ATMs etc from morning to midnight.

BPCL has partnerships with food-chains such as Café Coffee Day, McDonald’s, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC etc for its In&Out stores.

Annual revenues for 2014-15 was at Rs.10,000 crore in this segment as per the company’s 2014-15 annual report.

“BPCL has 15000 fuel retail outlets and 5000 LPG distribution centres. These centres will allow us to market our products. Besides, BPCL outlets have a lot of cash and as much as possible they want to digitize it so a wallet solution comes in place to reduce the cash burden,” said Rishi Gupta, CEO & MD, Fino PayTech Limited over phone.

Fino PayTech is a business and banking technology platform. In its seven years of existence, the firm has had 78 million customers through over 28,000 transaction points in 499 districts across the country. Fino provides basic banking, DBT (direct benefit transfer) payments, remittances, and a host of payment services for the unbanked rural and urban masses.

Gupta explained that partnering with BPCL would give Fino PayTech a regular stream of customers which is necessary to build a regular transaction ecosystem.

“Technology and digitization is the way going forward if these companies want to stay relevant for modern customers. In urban areas most users have moved on to e-wallets. It is only time before many more cities catch on. Besides, with the fuel retailing segment getting more competitive, only companies which adapt to changes fastest would gain customers,” said a senior analyst with a Mumbai-based domestic brokerage on the condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to the media.

Early this year, Indian Oil Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation tied up with mobile commerce platform, Paytm, to allow payments through the Paytm wallet at petrol pumps.