NEW DELHI: India’s second largest private sector lender, ICICI Bank, on Thursday, announced the launch of a comprehensive digital banking service that aims to empower over two crore offline and online retailers in the country. According to data from the Reserve Bank of India, the market for merchant services is expected to increase 45 per cent to Rs 31 lakh crore by financial year 2022, and ICICI bank intends to grab a large share of this market with its new offering, it said.
“We believe that the self-employed and the MSME segment forms the backbone of the Indian economy. There are over two crore merchants in the country with approximately $780 billion in value of transactions in 2020. They are expected to grow rapidly in the coming years and through these trying times of the pandemic, it is our endeavour to enable the merchants with a digital banking platform that will help them to continue to serve their customers,” said Anup Bagchi, Executive Director, ICICI Bank.
Christened Merchant Stack, the platform offers a bouquet of banking solutions and value-added services in a single place for the retailer ecosystem. According to the bank, the main pillars of the stack are a new account-type named ‘Super Merchant Current Account’; two instant credit facilities called ‘Merchant Overdraft’ and ‘Express Credit’, both based on POS transactions and first-in-the-industry; a ‘Digital Store Management’ facility to help merchants take their business online; an exclusive loyalty rewards programme; and other value added services.