Mumbai: ICICI Bank today announced the launch of its ‘Merchant Stack’, a set of the country’s most comprehensive digital banking services specially curated for retail merchants. The array of banking as well as value-added services enables merchants --- grocers, super markets, large retail store chains, online businesses and large e-commerce firms--- to meet their banking requirements seamlessly so that they can continue to serve their customers in the challenging times during the pandemic. This initiative is in-line with the Bank’s principle of ‘Business with Care’. Retail merchants can avail of these contactless services, without visiting the Bank’s branches, at a time when people are advised to stay home and maintain social distancing. They can avail of these facilities instantly, on InstaBIZ, the Bank’s mobile banking application for businesses.
‘Merchant Stack’ provides a bouquet of banking solutions and value-added services in ‘one single place’ for the retailer eco-system. The main pillars of the stack are 1) a new account named, ‘Super Merchant Current Account’; 2) two instant credit facilities called ‘Merchant Overdraft’ and ‘Express Credit ; both are’ based on POS transactions, and first in the industry 3) ‘Digital Store Management’ facility to help merchants take their business online; 4) exclusive loyalty rewards programme, an industry first feature; 5) value added services like alliances with major e-commerce and digital marketing platforms for expansion of online presence.
Commenting on the launch, Mr. Anup Bagchi, ICICI Bank said, “We always believe that the self-employed and the MSME segment forms the backbone of the Indian economy. A large part of this segment consists of retail merchants. There are over 2 crore merchants in the country with approximately USD 780 billion in value of transactions in 2020. They are expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. 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. We have thus launched the ‘Merchant Stack’, which most importantly offers a range of ‘contactless’ banking services, providing safety to the merchants and their customers alike. This new offering is part of our guiding principle of ‘Business with Care’. It is also a continuation of ‘ICICI Stack’ which we launched a year ago to offer retail customers all digital banking services from one platform.
We believe that the ‘Merchant Stack’ offers the most holistic array of banking and value-added banking services for the retail merchant ecosystem. Our research shows that this segment requires digital and instant account opening, multiple digital collection options in one place and quick working capital availability, among others. Armed with these insights, we have created a full stack that brings in a host of digital services specially curated for merchants. Further, all of the solutions are available on our mobile application, InstaBiz. We have also leveraged advanced analytics to use various parameters of POS transactions to offer instant overdraft and settlement of the swipes. We believe that this ‘all-in-one’ and comprehensive ‘Merchant Stack’ will provide easy digital banking to retailers, free up their bandwidth from paper-intensive procedures and thus boost their business growth by improving overall productivity and efficiency.”
The main pillars of the ‘Merchant Stack’ are given below:
Further, the Bank provides instant settlement of POS transactions with ‘Express Credit’. It offers enhanced convenience as merchants can instantly access the funds, in contrast to the industry practice of waiting for a few working days to get credit for sales on POS machines. To bring forth this facility, the Bank has undertaken two-fold initiative: One, it has leveraged technology to decongest the settlement process with network partner for movement of funds. Two, it has used advanced analytics to create an API, receive real-time information on transactions, check the profile of customer and credit the account---all within few minutes. The money is transferred immediately to the merchant’s linked ICICI Bank current account, 24x7, on all days including weekends and bank holidays.
Both the facilities aim to offer timely credit to merchants, including those who are new-to-credit.
The value-added services offered in the ‘Merchant Stack’ are:
Any merchant can enjoy the benefits of the ‘Merchant Stack’ by simply downloading the InstaBIZ app from Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Merchants, who are not the customers of the Bank, can also avail the benefits of the stack by instantly opening a zero balance current account using the InstaBIZ app in a digital manner. ‘InstaBIZ’ can also be accessed on the Bank’s Corporate Internet Banking (CIB) platform.
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