More than 1,500 jobs with an annual pay of Rs 1.50 crore will be up for grabs in the 11 payments banks that are set to start operations over the next year-and-a-half, headhunters and HR experts estimate. In August, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had approved 11 entities, including Reliance Industries, Vodafone m-pesa and Airtel M Commerce to open payment banks.

These payment banks to start operations in 18 months and will be allowed services like taking deposits, offer payments and remittance services, issue debit cards and act as agents for commercial banks. These will hire nearly 150 senior executives, 370 mid-level executives and over 1,000 junior-level staff in the coming months.

Payment Banks yet to hire CEOs:

Five of the licence holders – Cholamandalam, Department of Posts, National Securities Depository, Tech Mahindra and Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma – are yet to hire the chief executives for the payments backs.

“We expect a spike in demand for talent from liability product teams of transaction banking; digital product teams of retail banks or e-commerce platforms; and merchant acquisitions, sales & distribution talent from insurance companies retail banking and FMCG companies” Ayesha D’Souza, head of global banking and markets at Vito India, told ET.

“Salary for CXOs (CEOs and other management-level executives) is in the range of Rs 1-1.5 crore while for a level below it is around Rs 70 lakh to Rs 1 crore,” said Kalyani Shastry, associate director at RGF Executive Search.

Calling it a significant and important step from the RBI, finance minister Arun Jaitley had said he expected payments banks to reach out to people in rural areas. “Payments bank will ensure more money comes into banking system. Various banks are looking at increasing their rural reach, including big banks like SBI. Payments banks will help them realise this,” Jaitley had said.