The State Bank of India has launched a new program to get its small business borrowers to repay their loan payments on time. The new venture, called State Bank Rewardz, was introduced around the 60th anniversary of the SBI and gives SMEs incentives for on-time payments
It’s a loyalty program that allows customers to earn points for an array of banking transactions, and the Rewardz venture goes beyond SME lending and into debit cards and personal banking accounts.
Rewards are redeemed through the SBI Rewardz mobile app, reports said Wednesday (July 1), and includes point rewards for SME borrowers that maintain a certain average quarterly balance. The points can be redeemed at more than 6,000 merchants and for mobile services, movie tickets, travel or gift cards.
“We wanted to show our gratitude to customers who pay up on time and this was one way of saying thank you,” said SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya.
The rewards program follows in the wake of a similar effort to strengthen SBI’s ties with small business owners. In late May, SBI partnered with several mainstream eCommerce giants like Amazon to provide financing to the platform’s sellers.
The venture was another way for the SBI to promote timely loan repayments from the nation’s small business borrowers.
“Facilitating SMEs to do their business will also help secure their loan repayments to us,” said SBI deputy managing director Sunil Srivastava at the time.
Soon after, the SBI confirmed similar partnerships with PayPal and Snapdeal.
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