SBI rings up Airtel for mobile banking

State Bank of India, the country's largest bank and telecom giant Bharti Airtel today entered into a joint venture (JV) to make available banking services to the country's unbanked population.

The newly formed entity will harness the power of State Bank' strenghts and Airtel's mobile telephony to add value to the banking and financial services sector and empower millions of financially excluded in the country.

SBI Chairman O P Bhatt, said, "We look forward to taking the benefits of banking to the Indian masses and building a more inclusive society."

With the penetration of mobile teledensity standing at a strong 60 per cent, the market possesses great potential for a collaboration that combines the strengths of both banking and telecom sectors.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director, Bharti Airtel, said, "This will be a complete game changer, leveraging SBI's exposure in the banking sector along with Airtel's 150 million strong customer base and ecosystem of over 1.5 million retailers and distributors across India."

The JV as Business Correspondent will engage Airtel's retailers as customer service points (CSP) all over the country in a phased manner. With this, existing and new airtel mobile customers will be able to visit these outlets and open new SBI bank accounts and avail of other banking products and services available at CSPs. Additionally, existing SBI customers will also get serviced at these outlets.

The JV incorporation between SBI and Airtel will be concluded by 31 March, 2011.

On the Bombay Stock Exchange, shares of Bharti Airtel were trading strong at Rs 347.15, up 2.34 per cent while those of SBI were at Rs 2,634.70, up 0.88 per cent at IST 1321.