Mahila E-haat ties up with India Post, SBI to offer more payment option

AT A time when the push is on cashless transaction in the aftermath of demonitisation, the Women and Child Development Ministry has tied up with India Post and country’s biggest lender State Bank of India to offer more payment options to buyers. The bid is also seen as a way to simplify shipping of products bought from "Mahila E-haat." It may be mentioned that Mahila E-haat is an online marketing platform for...
women entrepreneurs. SBI users can avail multiple options for making payments such as draft, cheque, e-banking and e-wallet through "SBI Buddy" application. SBI customers abroad can make use of "SBI Global".
The partnership with India Post will help women selling products on the forum locate the nearest post office for shipping purposes.
The entrepreneurs can also enter a vendor agreement with India Post, which will help them get a discount on bulk consignments.
Mahila E-haat was launched in March for the socio-economic empowerment of women and sellers can register their products on the platform without having to pay any listing fee. Around 251 vendors have registered themselves with the forum. They have a network of nearly 1700 self-help groups that put up their products for sale.
In a related development, SBI on December 5 said the merger plan of associates with itself is on track and it should not get delayed due to the ongoing demonetisation process. A media report quoting a top SBI official said it won’t get delayed due to demonetisation. The merger of five associates and the Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) is planned to be wrapped up by 2016-17 end.
In August, SBI had said all its associate banks along with BMB will be merged into it and that will add an additional Rs 8 lakh crore to its assets, potentially making it a banking behemoth with total assets of Rs 30 lakh crore, an increase of about 36 per cent. With the merger of all the five associates and BMB, SBI will become a global-sized bank and could compete with the largest in the world, with 22,500 branches and 58,000 ATMs. It will have over 50 crore customers.
SBI has close to 16,500 branches, including 191 foreign offices spread across 36 countries. SBI had already merged two of its associates — State Bank of Saurashtra in 2008 and State Bank of Indore in 2010 — with itself.
The bank also said that its saving accounts have swelled up by Rs 1 lakh crore after demonetisation.
"Our deposits have exceeded by Rs 1 lakh crore in saving accounts from November 8 till date," SBI Managing Director Rajnish Kumar said on the sidelines of Inclusive Finance India summit. "Deposits are not an issue. The agenda for the next 3-4 months is to look at ways to increase our loaning and digitisation of banking operations," Kumar said.