SBI Payments partners with Visa to digitise merchant payments

SBI Payments, a subsidiary of the State Bank of India, has extended its integrated digital banking services platform YONO for merchants payment acceptance. 

It has partnered with card network company Visa to deploy the YONO Merchant App interface through a tap-to-phone feature, a statement said. As per the Visa website, the tap-to-phone feature enables off-the-shelf mobile devices to accept contactless payments without additional hardware.

The app looks to rope in 20 million merchants across the retail and enterprise segment in India in the next two-three years. 

“The bank launched the YONO platform three years ago. YONO has 35.8 million registered users. YONO Merchant is a brand extension of this platform aiming to improve user experience and bringing convenience to our merchants,” Dinesh Kumar Khara, chairman, SBI said in a statement. 

“In the next 2-3 years, we are aiming to digitize millions of merchants by upgrading their mobile phones into a PoS device accepting all form factors, accessing value added services, such as loyalty, GST invoicing, inventory management, etc and connecting into an interface to avail other banking products at a click of a button,” he said.

The launch of the soft point of sale (PoS) solution is in line with the RBI’s plan to create a  Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) to encourage acquirers to deploy PoS infrastructure -- both physical and digital -- in lesser penetrated areas of the country. 

Merchants will be able to use their Android smartphones as payment acceptance devices through mobile apps.

“The pandemic has highlighted the benefits of digital, less-touch payments to merchants and consumers alike. Our partnership with SBI is aimed at empowering more merchants with low-cost, innovative, simple and secure ways of accepting digital payments and forms an important part of our global commitment to digitally empower 50 million small businesses,”  TR Ramachandran, group country manager for India and South Asia at Visa, said. 

With India’s smartphone base expected to reach 820 million in the next two years, both SBI and Visa want to make the best of the opportunity. Following the deployment, merchants will also be able to access details of transactions, generate reports and upload transactions for processing  through SBI’s mobile application besides accepting payments on their mobile devices.

“We are aiming to grow our merchant touchpoints multi-fold, crossing 5-10 million within 2-3 years. YONO SBI Merchant is a great enabler for retail and enterprise merchants offering a holistic product proposition to improve merchant engagement, user experience and convenience,” Giri Kumar Nair, managing director and CEO of SBI Payments, said.