‘Indian banks are outstanding, international banks terrible,’ claims Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath

Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath praised the Indian banking system, while criticising international banks, sparking a debate between his followers. Kamath said that international banks take longer and cost more to transfer money. He thanked PMO, RBI and Nandan Nilekani for creating the current banking ecosystem. 

“Indian banks are outstanding, can't believe how terribly run international banks are. How in today's day and age can it take days to do a simple bank transfer, and cost so much? Full credit to @PMOIndia @RBI @NandanNilekani, Indian banks and everyone who helped create this ecosystem,” he said. 

Kamath’s tweet ignited a fresh debate among his followers. While a user disagreed with Kamath and said that international banks are well run, don’t have any issues, are not costly, and money transfer is seamless, another user said that banking is one of the few sectors where India is miles ahead of the rest of the world. 

Another user said that western banks, especially in the US, take more time for bank transfer because of funds safety and security reasons which is “zero in India”, while another pointed out that as a current resident of Malaysia, he can vouch for Kamath’s statement. 

“One of the worst experiences I had was in Norway. It takes 8 weeks to open a bank account and that too after a 2 weeks of wait time for appointment. So, in total 2 months to get a bank account number after that allow few weeks to get your card,” said a user, while another said, “I stay in Japan the 3rd largest economy and I see it run almost by liquid cash digital transactions are wallet based and percentage is less. Time to sell and earn from our technology including #NEFT #IMPS and the king of all #UPI #DigitalIndia is a model for all.”

“India has a mind blowing banking system, here in Germany yeah for every real-time transaction you have to pay around €0.60 otherwise the Transaction gets executed in two working days,” said a user, while another added, “Presently working with a large Canadian bank and I vouch what you are saying. Indian banking is already 15 years ahead. Still RTGS yet to be developed here.”

Nandan Nilekani, who Kamath thanked in his tweet, was the former Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India, and an advisor to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), that operates retail payments and settlement systems in India. He was instrumental in digitisation of payments in the country. 

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