SBI, PayPal join hands to ease cross-border transactions

India's largest commercial bank, State Bank of India (SBI), on Thursday signed an initial agreement with online-payments facilitator, PayPal, to ease and promote cross-border trade and payments for customers of both the organisations in India and abroad.

Initially, the provisions of the agreement would be rolled out for international transactions but will shortly be extended to cover domestic ones, SBI managing director B. Sriram said.

According to the bank, the deal would enable SBI debit card holders to use PayPal when buying products from overseas' websites and allow its nine lakh customers in small and medium scale industries to gain access to secure payment solutions.

It would also ease the access of Indian exporters and consumers to the global market. "This will bring new opportunities for our SME customer base," Sriram said.

"We understand the government's focus on the micro small and medium enterprises sector and believe that PayPal has a strong role to play in the 'Make in India' initiative. The collaboration provides SBI's customers a global access to businesses and consumers alike," said Vikram Narayan, managing director and country manager of India at PayPal.

According to the SBI, the partnership would help PayPal work closely with the SBI to make it easy for Indian exporters and consumers gain access to a global audience.

The two firms would create a joint coordination committee to implement the agreement.

The SBI has also inked deals with Amazon for payments and commerce solutions and with Snapdeal to finance its small-scale sellers.

-- Indo-Asian News Service

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