ICICI Bank
launches ‘Merchant Stack’; India’s most comprehensive digital and
contactless
banking platform for merchants
·
Aims to empower over 2 crore retail merchants in the
country with seamless banking services,
digitally
·
Offers instant banking facilities and value-added services in one place to enhance productivity and efficiency of merchants
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 digital 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 the contactless services, many of them being first-in-the-industry, 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:
·
Super
Merchant Current Account: It is a zero-balance account linked to
usage of the Bank’s POS (Point-of-Sale) facilities. The merchants can continue
to get the advantage of the zero balance account for a lifetime, till they use
these facilities. Any merchant, even if not a customer of ICICI Bank, can
digitally open the account. The Super
Merchant Current Account is available in two variants ---Super
Advantage and Super Advantage Plus --- to suit the requirements of merchants as
per the size of operations. Additionally, the current account offers retailers
the convenience of transacting with their customers using multiple digital
modes of payment including cards, UPI and payment gateway. Similarly, merchants
also get various options for making digital payments for their businesses. They
also get the benefit of instant reconciliation by using the Bank’s ‘Connected
Banking’ platform, that integrates banking and their accounting system, saving
them both time and effort.
·
Instant
Credit Facilities: The ‘Merchant Stack’ offers two instant credit facilities, based on POS transactions --- both being
industry first initiatives. The first one, called ‘Merchant Overdraft’ empowers
pre-qualified merchants with a linked ICICI Bank POS machine to get upto Rs 25
lakh digitally, instantaneously and in a completely online and paperless
manner. The facility leverages advanced data analytics at the Bank to form a
new scorecard with various parameters to assess the credit eligibility of
merchants using their POS transactions. The new credit assessment method of the
Bank is a marked improvement over the traditional industry practice of using
only bank statements, financial statements and income returns to offer working
capital facilities. Once the overdraft limit is set up, merchants can start
using the funds instantly to meet their working capital requirements. This
offers significance convenience to borrowers as they no longer need to wait for
few working days to avail an OD facility.
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.
·
Digital
Store Management: For merchants wanting to expand their
business in the online world, the ‘Digital Store Management’ platform is
available. It offers a one-stop-solution, which enables merchants to transform their ‘physical store’ into a ‘digital
store’
within half-an-hour. It also helps them to manage invoicing, inventory and
collections.
·
Loyalty
Programme:
The ‘Mechant Stack’ offers a loyalty rewards
programme for merchants, another industry first feature.
With this, merchants using the Bank’s Eazypay facility to accept instant
cashless payments from customers through POS/QR solution, get points for
transactions which can be redeemed for shopping, vouchers, vacations among
others.
The value-added
services offered in the ‘Merchant Stack’ are:
·
Access to
the new ‘One View’ ‘Merchant’ version on ‘InstaBIZ’ app: This
comprehensive mobile app enables businesses to complete almost all their banking
transactions digitally, without visiting a branch of the Bank. The ‘Merchant
View’ offers all the features of the ‘Merchant Stack’ in addition to the other
industry first features namely instant payment of GST, easy bulk collection and
payments of funds through multiple modes, automatic bank reconciliation and
inward/outward remittances among others. It also enables merchants to grow
their customer base by creating marketing campaigns for customers of ICICI
Bank.
·
Alliances
services with major platforms: The Bank has
tied up with a wide-range of companies, who are experts in concierge services
like staffing and security, and online skilling courses for computers, new
languages and accounting. Merchants can get services of these companies at a
discount to streamline or expand their business. Further, the merchants can
take the services of major e-commerce and digital marketing platforms for
advertising and acquiring customers online.
·
State-of-the-art
internet banking platforms: Availability of Corporate Internet
Banking (CIB) platform and Trade Online, a specialised digital platform for
export-import transactions.
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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