ICICI Bank partners with Amazon to offer ₹25 lakh overdraft facility to individual sellers and small businesses

• ICICI Bank to offer instant and online overdraft (OD) facility of upto ₹25 lakh to individual sellers and small businesses registered on Amazon.
• The OD facility works on an automated scorecard-based mechanism that allows instant approval to sellers.
• Customers who already have a current account with ICICI Bank can immediately start using the OD facility, while customers of other banks would need to open a current account with ICICI Bank digitally.

Private sector lender, ICICI Bank, has partnered with ecommerce titan Amazon to offer instant and online overdraft (OD) facility of up to ₹25 lakh to individual sellers and small businesses registered on the e-commerce giant’s online marketplace.

The partnership, ICICI Bank said in a press release on Monday, would enable sellers to avail an OD from the bank entirely digitally, starting from application to sanction to disbursement. Even customers of other banks can avail the OD facility from ICICI Bank, if they are registered as sellers with Amazon, it said.

The OD facility works on an automated scorecard-based mechanism that allows instant approval to sellers.

“We have specially curated a new way of assessing credit worthiness of the sellers on the basis of their credit bureau score, as well as their transaction history on amazon.in,” said Pankaj Gadgil, head- self employed segment, small and medium enterprises (SME) and merchant ecosystem at ICICI Bank.

“This new and improved process will help the sellers, who may otherwise not get access to adequate credit when assessed in the traditional way of using only balance sheets, bank statements and tax returns. We believe that this new proposition resonates [with] our effort in developing path breaking innovations for MSME [micro, small and medium enterprises] customers and will empower them with new avenues of business expansion,” he said.

Customers who already have a current account with ICICI Bank can immediately start using the OD to meet their working capital requirements, while customers of other banks can avail the OD by opening a current account with the bank digitally.

Below are quick steps for the sellers to avail the ‘InstaOD’:

• View offer: Eligible sellers can find the ICICI Bank offer on their account of Amazon Seller Central, online portal for sellers registered on amazon.in
• Click on banner: The seller is redirected to ICICI Bank’s ‘InstaOD’ platform upon clicking on the banner on Seller Central
• Fill details: The seller needs to login and fill in the digital application form
• Confirm to sanction amount: Upon confirmation of the amount from the seller, the OD is instantly sanctioned. If the seller already has a current account with ICICI Bank, then the seller can immediately start using the OD.
• Account opening for new-to-bank seller: Sellers new to ICICI Bank, will be redirected for instant opening of current account and KYC validation.
• Sellers registered on amazon.in can avail the ‘InstaOD’ facility through Amazon Seller Central or by clicking on the following link: https://sellercentral.amazon.in/lending/ph/offers
  

In April, ICICI Bank had launched its digital platform called ‘Merchant Stack’ to target over 2 crore retail merchants in the country. The platform offers an array of banking and value-added services to retailers, online businesses and large e-commerce firms, such as digital current account opening, instant overdraft facilities based on point-of-sale transactions and instant settlement of point-of-sale transactions, among others.

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