The country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) has called off talks with Visa Inc and Elavon Inc to form a joint venture (JV) for merchant acquisition business.
It informed the Bombay Stock Exchange about the cancellation of negotiations. However, it did not elaborate on reasons for discontinuing talks.
In May, 2011, the bank said it had selected consortium of Elavon Incorporation, USA and Visa International, USA as its JV partner. The lender had already received the Reserve Bank of India’s nod to set up subsidiary, named SBI Payment Services Pvt Ltd, for conducting merchant acquiring business.
According to the original plan, SBI was to rollout 60,000 lakh Point of Sale (PoS) terminals over five years as part of its plans to enter into merchant acquiring business. In the first year of operations, it was to establish 125,000 PoS units.
Around 40 per cent of the terminals were to be deployed in metros and major urban centres, while the rest would be in Tier-II and Tier-III centres.
ICIC I Bank, another player in this space, moved this business to its alliance with US-based First Data Inc.
