Can you imagine a bank that exists just virtually? Now, probably yes! But a couple of years ago? Hardly! 

Most users had a bewildered expression as they came across a neobank(or challenger banks as they are called) that was available at their fingertips- no more long queues and long waits! 

According to Zion Market Research, the global neobank market was worth $18.6 billion in 2018 and is expected to accelerate at a CAGR of ~46.5% between 2019-2026, generating ~ $ 394.6 billion by 2026! 

What is Neobanking?

In short, neobanking refers to the new-age Banking, or how the future of this industry is shaping up. In other words, 

Neobanking is an alternate banking experience where all the services provided by the bank are virtual, right from customer onboarding, to availing the simplest banking services. A neobank has no physical existence and operates entirely online. 

Neobanks come with a host of benefits, with customer experience taking the limelight. It’s no secret that you, me, and everyone else dread that visit to the bank for anything big or small. While modern banks have come a long way in providing a great experience for their customers, there are still gaps, especially in business banking. 

This brings us to the blog today!

List of Popular Neobanking Apps in India 

Thus, neobanking has the eyes of the entire world on them to change how banking is perceived. Today, let’s see the top & upcoming neobanks in India, curated for 2021. We’ll keep updating the list as more players enter the playground! 

P.S. We aren’t ranking these neobanking apps, just curating the list for you!    

FamPay 

FamPay is the country’s first Neobanking App for teenagers. It facilitates payments for teens under the supervision of their parents. A numberless card that is secure, FamCard is co-branded with IDFC First Bank.

It enables simple payments across different categories across platforms such as Amazon, Netflix, Zomato, Swiggy, and more. 

FamPay’s mission is to empower teens to start financial independence right from a young age and enable them to make responsible decisions when it comes to money & spending. The app currently has crossed over 2 million users. 

When we had a chat with Kush Taneja, Founder at FamPay, here’s what he has to say about revolutionizing the untapped teenage demographic!

Tapping into a brand new user segment, FamPay is India’s first neo-bank for teens. We aim to empower teens to become financially independent and literate. Our products – the FamPay App & pre-paid card – allow teens to make online and offline payments with seamless ease.

With a user-first approach, we are closely connected with our teen community and are rapidly evolving to better suit what they are most excited about while keeping in mind our key goal of making them financially independent.

Our flagship product the FamCard, India’s first numberless card is the most rewarding, sleek, and secure card in the market for teens. Being extremely stylish and personalized, teens are excited to have their own FamCards and it is trusted by parents for its unique security features.

With around 40% of the Indian population being below 18, every year millions of new teenagers will start using their first smartphone and FamPay envisions becoming their go-to brand. By connecting with them young, we are building an early relationship with the future adults most brands eventually want to tap, making FamPay the gateway for brands to target GenZ.

Kush Taneja, Founder at FamPay

Pricing: The physical FamCard Me is priced at ₹999, whereas the FamCard is priced at ₹ 499. Do check out for special offers and discounts for the prices could vary. On the other hand, the virtual FamCard is absolutely free!

Jupiter 

Just like the name, the ambition of this neobanking app is out of this world too!

Jupiter is a neobank that aims to provide a paperless & seamless banking experience to users in the country. When we reached out to the Jupiter team, here’s what they have to say about their neobanking app.

Jupiter was built to make banking simple & fun. Money seeps into every aspect of life, and so managing it should be painless and intuitive. We’ve made it super quick to get started with us: you can open a savings account in 3 minutes. You get instant, 24/7 support for any help you may need. Always. 

On our app, you can easily track your spends in real-time. You get 1% rewards that never expire. There are no hidden fees, no unexpected charges. Just a 100% digital, completely transparent experience that puts you first. That’s the way banking should’ve worked all along, but didn’t – and we’re here to fix that.

Team Jupiter

With this neobanking app, you can create bank accounts instantly, get a comprehensive view of your spending patterns, save wisely, and enjoy services minus any hidden fees. 

Furthermore, you can create a Pot for all your savings, monitor your spending goals, and put your investments in auto-pilot. Oh, and earn rewards in real-time, and be sure to utilize their calculator tools to assess your financial wellness!

Akudo 

Akudo, which means ‘Peaceful Wealth,’ is the country’s first learning-focused neobank for teens. The neobanking app caters to the young demographic and marches forward with the mission to empower teens with financial independence.

Teenagers can get a custom prepaid card for spending anywhere, all under the supervision of their parents. The app makes it possible for the parents to monitor their child’s expenses to avoid overspending. 

Moreover, the platform encourages teens to inculcate a savings habit and gives exciting rewards under a gamified ecosystem. 

When we asked Sajal Khanna, CEO & Co-founder at Akudo, here’s what she says about the fin-ed-tech platform for teens!

In a nutshell, Akudo is a digital bank for teenagers in India that gets them their own personalized prepaid card. And an app that helps them save money and unlocks rewards everytime they meet a personal finance goal.

Sajal Khanna, CEO & Co-founder at Akudo

Razorpay X

The list of neobanks would be incomplete without this fintech that has entered the unicorn club last year. Razorpay is one of the few companies from the country to enter the coveted list.

Razorpay X is the neobanking player that caters to credit cards and transactional services for SMEs and startups to help them receive payments from clients and make payouts to vendors.

Pricing: Razorpay X comes with 3 plans: Basic, Pro, and Enterprise, based on the need of your business.

OcareNeo

OcareNeo is the country’s first neobanking application for healthcare. The platform amalgamates two domains, banking & healthcare, to provide a smooth experience for both the healthcare professionals and the patients. 

For instance, one-tap access to the medical history with scannable Q.R. codes, virtual cards to swipe & manage healthcare expenses, and digital piggy banks for saving. 

Furthermore, you get e-insurance and can track all this information in one dedicated dashboard. All you need to do is sign up, and get started instantly. 

SaveIn 

Problem: 80% of Indians continue to lack access to formal credit due to lack of adequate credit histories and therefore borrow among friends, family, business partners, and other trusted relationships especially for their short-term credit needs. This is the largest personal loans market in India and has grown by over 100% during the pandemic.

However, such transactions remain unorganized, lack transparency in charging interest if any, the limited reach of lenders & borrowers, and fractured repayment process. How about a neobanking app that has stepped up to cater to this informal loan sector that remains untapped? 

When we had a chat with Jitin Bhasin, Founder & CEO of SaveIN, here’s what he has to say about the social-loan-focussed neobanking app.

“ SaveIN is India’s first social finance-led fintech platform that aims to organize and digitize this large market of informal, relationship-based, social loans thereby creating India’s largest alternate credit data pool and helping customers graduate up the formal credit curve. We intend to supplement this with class leading banking, credit, and micro-savings/investment products in a neo-banking partnership with banks and other financial institutions.”

Jitin Bhasin, Founder & CEO, SaveIN

This social finance neobanking platform helps you to find and connect with trusted lenders in your network of acquaintances & family, and avail short-term loans. Or, you can be a lender and offer loans to those in need as well! 

North Loop

Are you far away from home, in a distant country, and feel like you’re struggling with important financial chores? Find it hard to juggle money & investments in your home country and the new one at the same time?

Here’s a neobank that facilitates banking & investment for residents that live outside India!

North Loop is a financial platform that caters to a global audience and enables banking & investment services. The app removes the trouble that an individual faces while setting up accounts in a new country, availing credit, and managing finances within India. 

A neobanking app with global banking as its vision & mission and caters to both personal users & businesses. Further, North Loop offers a myriad of products and services for businesses, such as: 

• Virtual Accounts
• Invoicing
• Cash Management
• Expenses
• Payment Gateway
• Vendor Payments
• Payouts

… among many others! 

Pricing: North Loop comes with a free plan, Premium at ₹1999, and Ultra at ₹3999. In addition, there are custom solutions for freelancers to dodge the hassle of managing overseas clients. 

Niyo

Niyo is a neobanking app that comes with a host of modular products to simplify and enrich the experience for users:

• NiyoX: Zero balance savings accounts with up to 7% interest p.a on savings, easy investing, ability to directly invest into mutual funds, provision for you to earn interest on the FD invested. 
• Niyo Money: Mutual funds investments, tracking, & management.
• Niyo Bharat: Open banking platform for your business and salary cards for employees. Bank partners for Niyo Bharat include ICICI Bank, YES Bank, and DCB Bank.  
• Niyo Global: Helps users leverage 0% Forex Markup around the globe and the ability to load money in Indian Rupee and spend via 150+ currencies. All without extra charges. 

Open

Open also offers business banking services for entrepreneurs and SMEs to collect payments, enable payouts, and reconcile transactions automatically. 

The prepaid card offering by this neobanking app can be used anywhere, are available as both physical and virtual cards, and comes with an expense management system.

Open caters to more than 250,000 SMEs currently, is soon becoming a neobanking platform, helps business owners to simplify their vendors’ payouts & salary systems. 

Pricing: Open comes with three pricing plans that are available monthly, quarterly, and annually. The Solo plan that’s free, the Startup plan at ₹6000 for freelancers & early-stage startups/SMEs, and the Growth plan at ₹9000 for growth-stage startups & enterprises, all annually.

List of Upcoming Neobanking Apps

Freo

Meet Freo, the country’s first credit-led neobanking app by MoneyTap. The child company of MoneyTap, Freo enables customers to have a superior banking experience, avail credit, and manage their capital better. 

With credit driving the business, Freo will provide more products to customers, essentially everything a bank does, such as bank accounts, loans, credit, Buy Now Pay Later, etc. 

When we asked Anuj Kacker, Co-Founder, Freo what makes Freo different from the other neobanking apps, here is what he has to say.

Keeping the customer in the centre of the banking experience is important to (Freo’s) vision of building better financial access for our customer base throughout their lifetimes.

Even when we started in 2015, hearing customers’ feedback and using that to improve our product was the main focus. In order to make sure processes were more efficient and worked better in real-time, there was additional importance given to deep technological integrations with our banks and capital partners to add more convenience to the customer. 

As a master brand, Freo offers our teams the unlimited possibilities to create and launch new products that allow for smarter utilisation of an individual’s money. It also helps us become a one-stop-shop for people to get all their financial needs met, be it a savings account, better credit products, or a better credit profile, among other things.

Neobanks aren’t a unique concept today and many have been launched in the last 2-3 years in India. But while most of them have a primary focus on goal-based savings or investment, Freo will be India’s first Credit led Neo Bank. Being credit-led is our main differentiator and the USP.

Anuj Kacker, Co-Founder, Freo

mewt 

mewt is an upcoming neobank that caters to MSMEs and provides them exceptional banking services. The key services of mewt include: 

• Current accounts
• Debit cards for any online or offline transactions
• Money transfers 
• Instant Credit →  Easy account creation, same day disbursals, and unlimited withdrawals

MSMEs often find it difficult to manage their money flow; missing an EMI payment means credit score getting affected. mewt aims to help these businesses resolve these challenges and empower them with hassle-free money management. 

When we asked Rishabh Jain, CEO & Co-founder at mewt, here’s what he has to say about the MSME-centric neobanking app!

mewt (myoot) is modernizing banking for SMEs of Bharat by creating a supercharged bank account for them where they can combine all their accounts in one place, get 15 days of interest free credit, and earn 1% cashback on all supercharge card. mewt is bringing the privileged banking to the underserved MSMEs & making missed-EMIs history.

Rishabh Jain, CEO & Co-founder at mewt

List of Neobanks by Traditional Banking Institutions 

When fintechs are powering through with innovative solutions, banks aren’t far behind either. With a large customer base, banks have taken up the task of providing exceptional banking solutions; and now even neobanking especially for the millennial crowd. 

811 by Kotak

Kotak 811 is a new age bank account offered by Kotak Mahindra Bank that is the country’s first savings account you can open with just video KYC, and via zero-contact! 

What are some of the features provided? 

• Earn up to 4% interest per annum on your savings account balance
• Enjoy banking without balance commitment
• Shop online easily with virtual debit cards & apply for physical cards too. 
• Transfer funds online without any charges via NEFT, IMPS, RTGS

Digibank by DBS

Digibank provides instant onboarding, simplified payments, higher security, and rewards to users on their fully-online savings account. 

Some of the key features provided by this neobanking application include: 

• Universal Banking Remote to integrate all your bank accounts into digibank.
• OTP-less, secure authentication via their in-built Soft Token
• Easy tracking of your spends across categories with the Optimiser feature
• Account-details sharing with just a click
• Contact-less payments and smarter bill-payments with Scan & Pay and Tap & Pay features.  

Yono by SBI

Yono’s neobanking app by SBI, the first and oldest bank in India, comes with a host of services for corporate financial needs. Be it Corporate Internet Banking, Cash Management Product, Supply Chain Finance, eForex, or eTrade. 

It offers diverse payment options to businesses, electronic financing schemes to vendors & dealers, instant transactions & reconciliation, to name a few. 

Wrapping Things Up!

Phew! That was an awfully long read. But, a true testament to how the neobanking space in India is not only growing but thriving as well. 

Are you a neobank who is looking to spread wings and kick-start growth in this evolving sector? Or, are you an existing neobank who wishes to expand services & product offerings to your clients? We can help! 

Decentro’s simple plug-n-play banking APIs help neobanks such as yours to perform any banking operations easily on your platform and enable the same for your customers, partners, and vendors! Verify all users and onboard them in real-time with our KYC APIs, simplify your collections via UPI, enable instant fund settlements, reconcile all payments in real-time with virtual accounts, issue co-branded cards & wallets from your platform, and track & manage all spend easily. 

We’re super happy to enable the same for our beloved customers FamPay, NorthLoop, OcareMeo, Freo by MoneyTap, and Mewt and in turn, provide a superior experience to their customers, partners, and merchants!  

Intrigued? Hop onboard along with them. Here’s all you can bag with our APIs for Neobanks! 

Do you have any further suggestions that we can add to this list? Drop a reply to this blog! Or, do you wish to put your neobanking-wheels in motion? Ping us at [email protected]! 

Until we see you next time with yet another read.

Cheers! 

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