The Silicon Review ^Asia

State Bank of India rolls out a joint venture called SBI Payments Services withHitachi Payments Services. The venture was announced on Monday.

Hitachi Payments will help India in developing hi-tech digital payments platform for the future. 26 percent of the stake in SBI Payment Services will be acquired by Hitachi Payments and the remaining will be held by SBI.

Both the companies will seek regulatory approvals for the new venture. Under the partnership, Hitachi will create a digital platform for India where digital payments services will be developed and augmented.

Currently, Hitachi manages around 55,000 ATMs and 0.85 million PoS devices across different Indian cities.

Hitachi will integrate SBI’s strengths in customer base, brand trust and branch network, while also using its own technologies like AI and big data analytics.

Presently, SBI is the largest merchant buyer in the market (in terms of terminals through its subsidiary SBI Payments) because the biggest money lender in the country has over 6 lakh PoS (point of sale) terminals and 420 million customers.

Nowadays, a good number of payments companies have started using artificial intelligence to make things easier for the customers. According to a report, 83 percent of the Indian market believes that AI will work with human beings; the numbers are pretty higher than the world wide figures of 89 percent.

It will be interesting to see how the Indian market will be benefitted by the new venture.