Visa and ICICI Bank announce partnership in India to support FinTechs
By Edil Corneille
Visa, the digital payments technology company, today announced a platform collaboration with Mumbai-based ICICI Bank, a large private sector bank in India, on its ‘Visa in a Box’ programme for FinTech acceleration. The collaboration enables FinTechs to access application programming interfaces (APIs) and the developer sandbox of Visa and ICICI Bank which will help them build, test and deploy consumer payment applications.
ICICI Bank is the first bank to partner with Visa for its ‘Visa in a Box’ programme in India. ICICI Bank and Visa have come together to help FinTechs launch their prepaid card issuing programme in India. The bank offers its financial technology, in-depth market expertise and payment solutions to accelerate innovation within the FinTech community.
Under the partnership, ICICI Bank has launched co-branded prepaid cards with three FinTechs—one each in business banking, business expense management and neo banking. The partnership between Visa and ICICI Bank is expected to further accelerate FinTech enablement for innovations across digital issuance, lending and prepaid use cases.
The ‘Visa in a Box’ offering is designed to foster a collaborative ecosystem for Indian FinTechs by enabling distribution of digital credentials and value-added services. The program provides customers with streamlined access to a suite of modular capabilities and solutions built by Visa and its partners. A few examples of services include digital KYC, loyalty solutions, payment gateway facilities and innovations in card design. ‘Visa in a Box’ is architected to provide a ‘developer-friendly’ path to FinTechs who can rapidly prototype, build, test and launch new card offerings in India.
TR Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa said, “As India becomes one of the epicenters for payment innovation, it is incumbent upon established players to create a collaborative ecosystem for fintechs to help contribute to India’s journey of digital payment adoption. We are delighted to partner with our longstanding partner, ICICI Bank, towards this objective. The bank shares our vision of catalyzing fintechs who are solving for the payment challenges of tomorrow – across digital issuance, credit access, small merchant acceptance and commercial payments. Through this partnership with ICICI, we look forward to combining our platform assets and expertise, to deliver a robust kickstart for Indian fintechs.”
Sudipta Roy, Head- Unsecured Assets, ICICI Bank said, “ICICI Bank has always been at the forefront of digital innovations since its inception. We are happy to partner with Visa for their ‘Visa in a Box’ programme. We believe that this partnership presents us with an opportunity to get innovative solutions for our customers and partners, thereby catering to the growing demand for digital solutions in the country. We look forward to witnessing some pioneering and ground-breaking innovations and solutions through this programme, which have the potential to benefit a larger audience.”
Visa and ICICI Bank will also jointly develop programmes aimed at accelerating growth and innovation in their respective businesses. ICICI Bank will also have access to Visa’s growing network of partners – part of the Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI) – and provide guidance to get them to market in the most efficient way possible.
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