SBI drops plan for merchant acquiring business JV with Visa, Elavon

NEW DELHI: India's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) today said it has cancelled a proposed merchant acquiring business joint venture with US-based Elavon Incorporation and Visa International.

The bank has cancelled the negotiations for establishing a joint venture entity with Visa Inc and Elavon Inc for conducting the merchant acquiring business, SBI informed the BSE.

The merchant acquiring business involves facilitation of payments through debit or credit cards at retail outlets.

The RBI had already approved the setting up of a wholly owned subsidiary by SBI in the name of SBI Payment Services for conducting the merchant acquiring business.

The proposed joint venture between SBI Payment Services Pvt Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of SBI), Visa Inc and Elavon Inc was first mooted in 2010, it said.

In 2009, the bank had floated a Request For Proposal (RFP) for selection of joint venture ( JV) partners for the merchant acquiring business.

The business was to include acquisition of bank identification numbers (BINs) and providing managed services for point-of-sale (PoS) terminals. The managed services would have included deployment of POS terminals at customer locations, their replacement, merchant training and maintenance, among others.

State Bank of India Group presently has over 26,000 ATMs across the country and has issued over 80 million debit cards.

Source: EconomicTimes