SBI inks pact with Amazon to develop payment and commerce solutions

State Bank of India (SBI) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with e-commerce giant Amazon on Wednesday to develop payment and commerce solutions for customers and small businesses.

"Amazon is a very large company in the digital commerce space. We have a very large group of customers who could benefit by getting connected with this platform," SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya told journalists in Mumbai.

"The bank is working on ways to enrich customers' payment experience and opening up the windows of e-commerce to its SME customers through this tie-up", she added.

Amazon India vice-president and country manager Amit Agarwal said, "In SBI, we have a fantastic partner whom customers and businesses trust through long standing relationships- sometimes over generations. Moreover, SBI shares Amazon's philosophy of building customer trust and investing for the long term."

SBI, the country's largest lender, will also provide loans to SME customers who supply products to Amazon to help them increase their operations.

"Amazon has lot of SMEs who sell products on its platform. Their products are very good but they are not able to scale because they don't have that kind of financing. Can we look at something like that to see how they can scale as we are into the business of financing" Bhattacharya said.