ICICI Bank, a leading private sector bank in India and Niyo, a new age fintech today announced a tie-up to issue prepaid cards to Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) workers.
MSMEs will now be able to get ‘ICICI Bank Niyo Bharat Payroll Card’ powered by Visa, for their blue-collar workers, who are mostly under-banked. With this, MSMEs can upload the salaries of their workers on the card, which the workers can then utilise as per their need in a seamless manner. The ‘ICICI Bank Niyo Bharat Payroll Card’ allows an individual to receive funds upto Rs. 1 lakh into the card account. It offers convenience and safety of digital banking to the blue-collar workforce, while providing a state-of-the-art salary disbursement solution to the employers.
This partnership with ICICI Bank is in line with Niyo’s mission to revolutionize banking experience for India’s blue-collar workforce. With this, Niyo has announced its goal of reaching 5 million blue-collar workers in the next 5 years with its flagship product Niyo Bharat. Niyo Bharat currently has over 1.7 million customers and relationships with over 7000 corporates, adding nearly 5000 customers every day.
Speaking on the initiative, Mr. Sudipta Roy, Head – Unsecured Assets, ICICI Bank said, “We at ICICI Bank constantly strive to introduce facilities that foster inclusivity and extend the reach of the formal banking ecosystem. In line with this, we are delighted to partner with Niyo for the ‘ICICI Bank Niyo Bharat Payroll Card’. This partnership is yet another initiative by us to make banking products easily accessible to the underbanked population. We believe that armed with this card, workers of MSMEs will be able to enjoy the convenience and safety of digital banking.”
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Niyo Co-founder and CEO Vinay Bagri said, “The Niyo Bharat Digital Salary Solution has the potential to bring millions of blue collared salaried workforces into the formal economy and also support the nation’s successful march towards Digital India. Our primary objective is to provide digital banking solutions for the blue-collar segment to not only foster financial inclusion but also inculcate a long-term saving habit among them.”
Any MSME can tie-up with Niyo to avail the prepaid card. After the tie-up, cards are issued to the workers at their workplace itself while their KYC verification is done simultaneously using a bio-metric device. Once activated, workers can use the card to withdraw funds at ATMs, make online transactions on e-commerce portals and make payment by swiping the card at Point of Sale (PoS) machines.
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