Business
SBI, PayPal join hands to ease cross-border transactions
Kolkata, May 21
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.