RBL Bank and Tide India, part of Tide UK, UK’s leading business banking fintech, have partnered to provide banking infrastructure for Tide’s India platform focused on the SME segment.
This collaboration will enable Tide to bring its platform to the Indian markets with a full-fledged launch, a release said.
With one in 20 SMEs in the UK (equivalent to over 5% market share) using Tide to manage their business banking and administration, it has over 320,000 SME members.
Under the tie-up, businesses – especially small and medium-sized enterprises – have an option to open current and savings accounts at RBL Bank through Tide’s business platform.
Depending on customer requirements, the bank can also integrate its payment APIs to enable Tide users to make seamless transactions from Tide’s platform.
Founded in 2015, Tide has a long-term ambition to be a leading player in markets accounting for 25% of global SMEs.
Apart from supporting the organised SME sector, Tide will also focus on serving the unregistered and unorganised sector, helping bring these SMEs into the mainstream by providing them access to RBL Bank’s plethora of business banking products and services.
Tide plans to acquire 25,000 customers in the next financial year and scale up to two million customers in the next five years.
RBL Bank Head – Branch Banking Surinder Chawla said, “We are excited about this strategic tie-up with Tide, that shares our mission of reaching out to the underserved segment.”
RBL Bank has agile technological capabilities and compelling customer offerings to help Tide build a strong foundation in the country and scale up its business.
Tide CEO Oliver Prill said, “We could not have a better banking partner than RBL Bank as we embark on the next stage of Tide’s journey, building a business financial platform to serve SMEs in the Indian market.”
With this partnership, we are ready to begin initial testing of Tide India, before entering into similar partnerships with other leading fintech providers to build our platform during the course of 2021, he added.
