In a bid to grab business in the digital commerce space, the country's largest lender State Bank of India has been aggressively collaborating with on-line retailers such as Amazon and Snapdeal, and is ramping up card products and payments solutions businesses towards this end.
SBI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Amazon to develop payment and commerce solutions for customers and small businesses.
SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said bank is exploring ways to fulfill the aspirations of millions of its customers. She said the bank's partnership with platforms like Amazon would give a fillip to e-commerce in India and would bring a lot of value to its retail and SME customers.
SBI chief said the tie-up with Amazon does not have the element of exclusivity and the bank is free to have similar tie-ups with other e-commerce players. The bank is expected to sign agreement with Snapdeal in Kolkata. It is working on ways to enrich customers' payment experience and opening up the windows of e-commerce to its SME customers. E-commerce as an industry is at inflection point and SBI stands with all the stake holders including the retail customers, the SME clientele, and logistics companies in facilitating this defining change.
"SBI will also provide loans to SME customers who supply products to Amazon to help them increase their operations. Amazon has lot of SMEs who sell products on its platform. Their products are very good but they are not able to scale because they don't have that kind of financing. Bank we look at financing them for scaling up business," Bhattacharya said.
The bank may also look at selling its financial products on Amazon in near future, she said, without giving further details.
Bhattacharya said SBI has been investing to in developing digital capabilities as part of information technology backbone, systems and products. SBI has huge customer base but not many use E-commerce platform. There is need to develop product that will hook them for using electronic commerce.
Last week SBI introduced contactless debit cards and SBI Signature contactless credit cards for quick, secure and hassle-free payments at merchant outlets.
Contactless cards use near-field communication (NFC) technology to make payments by waving or tapping the card near the contactless reader instead of swiping or dipping. These cards will replace the use of cash at retail establishments like convenience stores, petrol stations and supermarkets.
In the first half of this month SBI in association with NPCI launched "State Bank RuPay Platinum Debit Card. It will target the affluent segment by offering a range of value added benefits including, five per cent cash-back on utility bill payments and upto one per cent fuel surcharge waiver. The offering also provides personal accidental death and permanent total disability insurance cover of Rs two lakh.
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