SBI Bank’s Products at Airtel Mobile Customer Points – New JV Announced

State Bank of India and airtel have entered into a joint Venture (JV) agreement to make available banking services to India’s unbanked millions.

The Joint Venture will become the Business Correspondent of SBI and offer banking products and services at affordable cost to the citizens in unbanked and other areas.

The JV as Business Correspondent will engage airtel’s retailers as Customer Service Points (CSP) all over India in a phased manner. With this, existing and new airtel mobile customers will be able to visit these outlets and open new SBI bank accounts and avail of other banking products and services available at the CSPs. Additionally, existing SBI customers will also get serviced at these outlets.

This partnership between India’s leading mobile and banking service providers represents a first-of-its-kind collaboration aimed at making the concept of inclusive banking a reality for customers in India.

The JV incorporation between SBI and airtel will be concluded by 31st March, 2011.

Mr. O. P. Bhatt, Chairman, State Bank of India said,

[advt]”This joint venture will enable the bank to fulfil its mandate of reaching out to every Indian leveraging the distribution network of airtel to provide banking services in a cost effective and secure manner. With this, we look forward to taking the benefits of banking to the Indian masses and building a more inclusive society thereby carrying forward State Bank’s vision of being the Banker to every Indian”.

Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti airtel said,

” The services offered by the JV will enable financial inclusion and economic empowerment for people across India. This will be a complete game changer, leveraging SBI’s expertise in the banking sector along with airtel’s 150 million strong customer base and ecosystem of over 1.5 million retailers and distributors across India. Together, we will create a scalable operation that will address the banking requirements of millions of Indians through the mobile platform.”

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