SBI To Reassess Payments Bank Partnership With Jio

The country's leading state-run lender State Bank of India shall re-evaluate its alliance with Jio for launching the Payments Bank.

On the move, Dinesh Khara-the bank's Chairman told a leading daily, "Payment bank per se has undergone so many changes. So that is perhaps the reason why it has never really gone full fledged. Maybe, they (Jio) have also kept on changing their technology, they are studying. On our investment, as of now, we have not taken any call on this. The timeline till 2023 is some time away. The landscape is changing very fast. We will see what plan of action to take."

The scheme of the join venture was announced 4 years ago in 2018 and the same is yet to be worked upon.

Importantly, RBI gave its go-ahead to Jio to start with its Payments Bank in 2018. As per the RBI, scope of activities of Payments Bank includes acceptance of demand deposits, issuance of ATM/ debit cards, payments and remittance services, issuance of PPIs, internet banking, functioning as BC of another bank among others.

Nevertheless these banks cannot extend loans or issue credit cards to their customer base.

In the joint venture, SBI has 30% stake.