State Bank of India (SBI) and Hitachi Payment Services (Hitachi Payment Services), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, announced  the launch of merchant acquiring joint venture, SBI Payment Services (SBIPSPL) in Mumbai, for establishing a state-of-the-art digital payments platform for India and other countries in the region.

This Joint Venture will facilitate expansion of the digital payments landscape in India by creating a state-of-the-art digital payments platform that will enable offering of innovative products to suit the requirement of all segment of merchants, leveraging the brand value and unparalleled distribution network of SBI and bringing Artificial Intelligence and other technological capabilities of Hitachi to SBI Payment Services (SBIPSPL).

Chairman, State Bank of India, Rajnish Kumar said, ''Through this Joint Venture, we aim to maintain our position as the top acquirer in the merchant digital payments space by providing technologically superior and seamless services to our customers. We will also utilise business analytics to develop strategies to penetrate into hitherto untouched Indian towns and cities through merchant centric digital payments solutions.''

Shares of the bank gained Rs 3.05, or 1.12%, to settle at Rs 276.00. The total volume of shares traded was 2,331,903 at the BSE (Tuesday).