State Bank of India, which is in the process of hiving off a chunk of its merchant acquiring business, has shortlisted six payment entities for the process. Worldline, PayU and Hitachi Payments Services among others are in the race to form a joint venture with SBI, which has offered a 26-40% share of the business.The largest lender of the country wants to finalise the process by end July .
The shortlisted six are mostly engaged in digital payments, automated teller machines or point of sale (PoS) terminals. Entities such as PayU, Financial Software and Systems (FSS), payment pro cessing companies like Hitachi Payment Services, Worldline and First Data had joined the race along with UAE-based payments company Network International.
State Bank's merchant acquiring business has around 450,000 merchants exclusively on its platform using around 600,000 PoS terminals. In addition, the bank also has 250,000 merchants on Aadhaar Pay, Unified Payments Interface and other interoperable payment modes. The business deploys and processes digital payments and has assumed heightened significance since November's demonetisation.
"We have to evaluate these companies technically, do a couple of site visits, do our due diligence. Then we will come out with the final shortlist of companies with whom we will share our business plans," said Aggarwal. While the final valuation of the company has not been made public, sources said the business could be valued at Rs 2,500 crore.