Citibank to launch digital payments product Spring in India in Q2 | Mint

Currently available in about 24 countries, Spring by Citi processes business-to-business and direct-to-customer payments, and integrates with payment methods across geographies. The bank manages 4.3% of electronic payment flows, 8% of trade flows, and 25% of Swift payments in India, according to internal data shared with Mint.

“Think of a merchant that wants to accept different methods of payment such as cards, wallets, bank accounts from markets around the world. Spring is a payment gateway and acquirer that clients could connect to in order to enable multiple payment methods,” said Subramanyam.

“We are in about 24 markets around the globe and support multiple payment methods in each market – payment methods like iDEAL in the Netherlands, GiroPay in Germany, UPI in India. Clients need global product coverage but execution needs to be very much local so that it is relevant for the folks that are buying from that region,” he added.

The proposed launch comes over a year after Citi exited retail banking in India by selling its business to Axis Bank. It now focuses on large local companies, multinationals, financial institutions, and emerging and mid-sized firms.

In addition to enabling various payment methods, Spring offers platform services such as tokenisation, recurring transactions and reporting, reconciliation with treasury, and cash management services, he said. “We also work with a variety of independent software vendors such as shopping carts, commerce platforms, etc. So, if a client wants to connect to us directly, they can. If they want to work through a supported third-party commerce platform or shopping plug-in, they could [do] that as well.”

Spring was developed by Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions business, a segment that comprises payments, working-capital solutions, and liquidity management. Santosh Dujari, head (Indian subcontinent), treasury and trade solutions, Citibank, said in an interview that the company has two important priorities for India in the payments space.

“One is to launch Citi Payment Express, our next-gen, cloud-enabled, API-led, high-performance, low-latency platform to improve the end-to-end payments journey for our clients. The other is Spring by Citi, a unified collection solution for our clients across industries,” she said. “The Indian consumer is embracing digital payments led by UPI. These solutions will be digital catalysts that help us grow our payments business.”

Dujari said India’s payment landscape has been transformed, and that Citi’s customers are now expecting “holistic and comprehensive” solutions across payments and collections. “With our large client base across industries, we have been seeing new business models emerge over the last couple of years,” she said.

Since its launch in August 2016, the UPI has unleashed a digital-payments revolution in India, clocking more than 10 billion transactions a month since August 2023. In February, the number of transactions on UPI stood at 12.1 billion.

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Published: 19 Mar 2024, 03:30 PM IST