FSS CashTech
-Empowering billion lives
FINANCIAL SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS PRIVATE LIMITED
Financial Software and Systems Private Limited (FSS) is a pioneer and leading Payment Systems company based out of Chennai, India, catering to the needs of online payments to the Banking and financial sectors. FSS customer list includes the top government and private banks including State Bank of India (SBI), Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, besides all the Public Sector (PSU) banks of India.
Outside India, FSS provides onsite and offsite software development, support, project management and implementation, and helpdesk services to over 30 overseas customers.
Established in 1991, FSS was the first to implement the ATM Switch in the Country, for Indian Bank. Since then, FSS has been focused on online payments, and with partners set up the first domestic ATM sharing Switch, Swadhan, in 1997. The opening of new generation private sector banks with extensive technology orientation helped FSS bag switch orders from Axis Bank (then UTI Bank) and HDFC Bank. This was rapidly followed by payment system implementations for public sector banks such as Punjab National Bank, Andhra Bank and State Bank of India. For SBI, FSS implemented the largest ATM Switch, currently driving over 50,000 ATMs, and earlier on, connected to over 5,700 distributed branch systems.
Moving ahead FSS being pioneer in payments industry understood that payments are the connective tissue of a financial system. They link buyers with suppliers, allow governments to transact with their citizens, and connect friends and relatives in webs of financial support networks. Similarly, payments are the building blocks of financial services. Financial lives of literate and rich households are embedded in a digital financial system which makes it cheap and easy for them to conduct financial transactions. In contrast, most poor households live in a physical cash economy, where they store and transfer value through tangible assets, such as cash, jewelry, or livestock. This, “cash-digital divide” makes it expensive and risky for poor households to perform basic financial activities. It drives a wedge between poor households and the formal economy by making it costly for banks, insurance companies, utility companies, and other institutions to transact with them. Having its own FI gateway, FSS ideated a strategy to bridge this gap and made empowering billion lives its vision for financial inclusion.
At FSS we believe, financial inclusion as the process of bridging physical, digital, and psychological clouds. Connecting the physical and digital clouds unlocks “access” while connecting the digital and psychological clouds unlocks “usage.” Fundamentally, we need to build low-cost “on-ramps” that enable poor people to convert their physical cash into digital money, and we need to integrate those on-ramps with formal institutions so poor people can meet their financial needs in digital form. Once poor customers are transacting (at an affordable price) with their peers, banks, governments, and utility companies, we will have achieved digital financial inclusion.
Today, FSS CashTech Platform provides a single integrated platform as one stop solution for all financial services. It features custom made products or BOP (Bottom of the pyramid) consumers. FSS CashTech leverages its network of 32,000+ devices as FI acceptance point.
Economic growth is only sustainable if it is equitable and inclusive when all segments are incorporated into the mainstream and given financial access and independence. When more people are included as part of the mainstream financial system, they can generate additional income streams by accessing credit, park their savings into investments and build assets, and purchase insurance and protect themselves financially.