State Bank of India (SBI) has said it will soon start facilitating payments through debit or credit cards at retail outlets and was finalising the shareholding pattern with foreign partners.
“We would be finalising the equity ratio with the joint venture (JV) partner soon, post which merchant acquiring would become operational,” SBI Chairman O P Bhatt said.
Merchant acquiring involves the facilitation of payments through debit or credit cards at retail outlets.
SBI is planning to place about 1.5 lakh point of sale (PoS) terminals for debit and credit card payments across the country. It plans to deploy six lakh of these terminals in the first five years of its operations.
US-based Elavon Incorporation and Visa International are the JV partners of SBI.
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The business penetration of the new line of operation is envisaged on a pan-India scale, having metro, urban, semi-urban and rural centres. Last year, the bank had floated a Request For Proposal (RFP) for the selection of JV partners for merchant acquiring business.
The business would include acquiring bank identification numbers from schemes, as well as managing services for PoS terminals, among others.
The managed services would include deployment of PoS terminals at customer locations, their replacement, merchant training and maintenance, to name a few.
The State Bank Group presently has over 21,000 ATMs across the country and has issued over 60 million debit cards.