SBI plans to deploy low-cost acceptance infrastructure across India over the next two years and target 2 crore potential merchants to expand the infrastructure, SBI Payments partnered with Visa

The State Bank of India (SBI) is preparing to launch the YONO Merchant app to help millions of merchants in the retail and enterprise segment. The new platform will help merchants accept digital payments through mobile-based technology. "This is in line with RBI's recent announcement to create a Payment Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) to encourage buyers to deploy (Pay of Scale)POS infrastructure (physical and digital) in less penetrated areas of the country," the bank said in a statement.

In addition to accepting payments, users will also be able to access transaction details, generate reports, and upload transactions for processing through the YONO Merchant app. The country's largest lender plans to roll out a low-cost acceptance infrastructure across India over the next two years, targeting 20 crore potential merchants.

To expand the infrastructure, SBI Payments partnered with Visa. "As many consumers and merchants enter the Internet, secure and seamless digital payment experiences are essential to ensure that they continue to use digital payments," the lender said in a statement.

The YONO platform was launched three years ago and now has 3.58 crore registered users. Dinesh Kumar Kara, Chairman of the State Bank of India, said that YONO Merchant is an extension of the brand of this platform that aims to improve the user experience and provide convenience to our merchants.

In the next 2-3 years, our goal is to digitize millions of merchants by upgrading their mobile phones to a PoS device that accepts all form factors, access value-added services such as loyalty, GST invoices, inventory management, etc., and connect to the interface to avail other banking products with one click.

"Our goal is to grow our merchant touchpoints multi-fold crossing 5-10 million in 2-3 years. YONO SBI Merchant is a great enabler for retail and enterprise merchants providing a comprehensive product proposition to enhance merchant engagement, user experience, and convenience, "commented Giri Kumar Nair, Managing Director, and CEO of SBI Payments.

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