SBI's credit card business aims to raise $1.1bn via IPO

MUMBAI: SBI Card & Payments Services Ltd, the credit card subsidiary of State Bank of India (SBI) , plans to raise about 80 billion Indian rupees ($1.12 billion) via an initial public offering this year, a senior SBI executive involved in the process said.

SBI has already tapped banks to run the IPO process and a listing is expected to happen in the last quarter of this financial year, bank officials have previously said.

"Roughly about an 8% stake will be divested and after seeing the valuations and the inputs we are getting it would translate to 80 billion rupees," said the source directly involved in the process, who asked not to be named as the details are not public.

This would value the overall business at about 1 trillion rupees ($14 billion).

SBI and SBI Card did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At the end of March 31, 2019, SBI Card, which is 74% owned by SBI and 26% by U.S private equity firm Carlyle Group, had total assets worth 195.93 billion rupees.

India's credit card market is still small compared to its debit card market. The latest regulatory data shows that there were 49.6 million credit cards in circulation in the country, compared with 836 million debit cards.

SBI Card is the second-largest credit card issuer in the country, with 8.8 million outstanding cards as of June 30. It only trails private lender HDFC Bank in terms of the number of cards issued.

Earlier this year, home-grown ride hailing company Ola had partnered with SBI Card to launch a co-branded credit card, allowing the company to expand its customer base.

SBI's management has been looking at selling its investment in non-core assets to raise capital.

SBI Card will be SBI's second subsidiary to be listed. In 2017, the bank's life insurance business SBI Life Insurance was listed in a 84 billion rupees IPO.