ICICI Bank launches ‘Merchant Stack’; India’s most comprehensive digital and contactless banking platforms 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.”
