ICICI Bank introduces a new digital mode of payment in India

By Edil Corneille

Today, ICICI Bank announced the launch of a fully digital mode of payment at retail stores in India. Called ‘ICICI Bank Cardless EMI’ (Equated Monthly Instalments), the facility enables its pre-approved customers to buy gadgets or home appliances by using their mobile phones and PAN (Permanent Account Number) in lieu of wallets or cards. Customers can convert high-value transactions into easy, no-cost monthly instalments by simply inputting their registered mobile number, PAN and OTP (received on mobile number) on the PoS machine at retail outlets.

ICICI Bank has tied up with Pine Labs, a merchant commerce platform, to offer this facility across pan-India outlets of retailers such as Croma, Reliance Digital, My Jio Stores and Sangeetha Mobiles. At these stores, customers can avail the ‘Cardless EMI’ facility to purchase electronics from brands such as Carrier, Daikin, Dell, Godrej, Haier, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Oppo, Panasonic, Toshiba, Vivo, Whirlpool and MI. The bank will add many more brands as well as retailers under this facility in the near future.

Speaking on the initiative, Sudipta Roy, Head- Unsecured Assets, ICICI Bank said, “We at ICICI Bank always strive to enhance our customer’s convenience and provide them with innovative solutions to make banking more accessible and hassle-free. Purchasing home appliances, mobile phones and gadgets on EMI is a known consumer behaviour in India. We have seen large number of consumer durables are purchased by using EMI facilities on credit and debit cards.

In order to provide further convenience, we are introducing the ‘Cardless EMI’ facility so that the customers can transact just by using mobile phone and PAN, without even carrying their cards or wallet. We believe this facility will empower lakhs of pre-approved ICICI Bank customers in the on-going festive season to purchase products of their choice in a completely contactless, digital and secure manner.”

Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs added, “The beauty of ‘Cardless EMI’ is that it is a very complex programme to develop, yet it is extremely secure. We hope this will open new consumer segments and give access to shop-now-pay-later at more 1 lakh Pine Labs merchants across India. We are very excited to partner with ICICI Bank on this cutting edge technology programme.”