ICICI Bank today launched the Merchant Stack, a digital platform, a set of digital banking services and retail merchants.
The tailormade platform enables merchants to meet their banking requirements seamlessly ensuring smooth functioning amid the pandemic.
The initiative will allow merchants to avail services without visiting the bank’s branches via InstaBIZ, the bank’s mobile banking application for businesses.
“We always believe that the self-employed and the MSME segment forms the backbone of the Indian economy. There are over 2 crore merchants in the country with approximately $ 780 billion in value of transactions in 2020…‘Merchant Stack’ 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,” said Anup Bagchi, ICICI Bank.
Main features of Merchant Stack
1. Super Merchant Current Account: It is a zero-balance account linked to the usage of the Bank’s POS (Point-of-Sale) facilities. It is available in two variants —Super Advantage and Super Advantage Plus — to suit the requirements of merchants as per the size of operations.
2. Instant Credit Facilities: The ‘Merchant Stack’ offers two instant credit facilities, based on POS transactions both being industry-first initiatives. The first one, called ‘Merchant Overdraft’ empowers pre-qualified merchants with a linked ICICI Bank POS machine to get up to Rs 25 lakh digitally, instantaneously and in a completely online and paperless manner.
Both the facilities aim to offer timely credit to merchants, including those who are new to credit.
How to avail the feature
Any merchant can enjoy the benefits of the ‘Merchant Stack’ by simply downloading the InstaBIZ app from Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Merchants, who are not the customers of the Bank, can also avail the benefits of the stack by instantly opening a zero balance current account using the InstaBIZ app in a digital manner. ‘InstaBIZ’ can also be accessed on the Bank’s Corporate Internet Banking (CIB) platform.