ICICI Bank recently introduced its new scheme called ‘merchant stack’. It is a package of banking services and a solution with the help of which small businesses will be able to transform their ‘physical store’ into a ‘digital store’ in just half an hour.
The package will not only offer payments and reconciliation solutions, but a variety of other facilities such as a zero-balance current account that could be opened remotely. It will also provide credit facilities on the basis of analytics of payment received through digital channels.
Sources say that the merchant stack has been introduced to focus on small businesses such as grocers, super markets, retail store chains, online businesses, and e-commerce firms. As per the ICICI Bank ED Anup Bagchi, given the current situation, the bank was looking for a smart approach to increase its small business exposure. Owing to the bank’s analytics-based approach, the credit cost in this business for the bank was a fraction of the 8% it was for the industry.
Bagchi states that in the year 2020, there were over 2 crore merchants in the country whose approximate value of transactions was $780 billion. The bank aims to help the merchants during the testing times of the pandemic, with a digital banking platform, which will help in fulfilling their banking requirements with efficiency.
The merchant stack will include a variety of features such as a new current account, two instant credit facilities based on point-of-sales transactions, and a digital store management facility, which will help merchants to taking their business online. This new scheme will be accompanied by a variety of value-added services such as alliances with major e-commerce and digital marketing platforms to strengthen the online presence.
