SBI, Visa in JV for merchant acquiring biz

Country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) today said it has selected US-based Elavon Incorporation and Visa International as its joint venture partners for merchant acquiring business.

Merchant acquiring business is facilitation of payment through debit or credit card at the retail outlets.

The terms of arrangement are being worked out, SBI informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.

RBI has already approved the setting up of a wholly owned subsidiary for conducting merchant acquiring business by SBI in the name of SBI Payment Services, it said.
    
Last year, the bank had floated Request For Proposal (RFP) for selection of joint venture (JV) partner for merchant acquiring business.
    
The business would include acquiring bank identification numbers (BINs) from the schemes, as well as managing services for point of sale (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.
    
Meanwhile, SBI is planning to place about 1.50 lakh POS terminals for debit and credit card payments across the country in the next fiscal.
    
It plans to deploy six lakh POS terminals in the first five years of its operations.
    
The business penetration of the new line of operation is envisaged on a pan-India scale, with metro, urban, semi-urban and rural centres.
    
The State Bank Group presently has over 18,000 ATMs across the country and has issued over 60 million debit cards.