Tide and RBL Bank join forces to enhance banking infrastructure for Indian SMEs

By Leandra Monteiro

Tide, a UK business banking FinTech has tied up with India’s RBL Bank to provide bank account infrastructure for Tide’s India platform, focused on the SME segment. This partnership will enable Tide to bring its platform to the Indian market with a full-fledged launch. According to the UK FinTech, one in twenty SMEs in the UK use Tide to manage their business banking and administration, it has over 320,000 SME members.

Under the new tie-up, Tide members from small and medium-sized enterprises have an option to open current and savings accounts at RBL Bank through it’s platform. Through RBL payment APIs Tide members will be able to make seamless transactions from its platform.

Launched in 2017, Tide aims to account for 25% of global SMEs. RBL Bank’s geographical presence across the country, digital banking services, robust product portfolio in the SME space and an agile technical stack will allow it to quickly scale up its business in India. Apart from supporting the organised SME sector, the FinTech will also focus on serving the unregistered and unorganised sector, helping bring these SMEs into the mainstream. The UK based company plans to acquire 25,000 members in the next financial year and scale up to two million customers in the next five years.

Surinder Chawla, Head – Branch Banking, RBL Bank said, “We are excited about this strategic tie-up with Tide, that shares our mission of reaching out to the underserved segment. RBL Bank has agile technological capabilities and compelling customer offerings to help Tide build a strong foundation in the country and scale up its business. Together, we are passionate about delivering innovative and integrated services that will improve the overall banking experience for the SME segment.”

Commenting on the partnership, Dr. Oliver Prill, Tide CEO said, “We could not have a better banking partner than RBL Bank as we embark on the next stage of Tide’s journey, building a business financial platform to serve SMEs in the Indian market. RBL Bank offers industry leading banking, payments and security technology, giving Tide the foundations that will enable us to build the best possible service to help SME owners save time and money. With this partnership, we are ready to begin initial testing of Tide India, before entering into similar partnerships with other leading fintech providers to build our platform during the course of 2021”