SBI Wants To Let You Pay Your Bills With Keychains

If you are a State Bank of India (SBI) customer, get ready to pay for your groceries using keychains.

- Anshika Kayastha & Abirami Sekar

If you are a State Bank of India (SBI) customer, get ready to pay for your groceries using keychains. While payments have leapt ahead of plastic cards, mobile phones and watches, India's largest lender wants to raise the bar for digital transactions through wearable devices.

The state-owned bank has sought bids to support its foray into wearable payment technologies and for personalizing and upgrading debit cards, according to a document seen by Mint. Apart from keychains, the bank also wants to try out near-field communication (NFC) stickers and silicon bands, among others. The bank, the document showed, wants proposals from interested bidders to offer solutions that will work seamlessly with its existing infrastructure.

"What we use today as contactless transactions, many shopkeepers even call it a Wi-Fi card, is essentially NFC. You tap it on the machine and the transaction goes through," said Parijat Garg, an independent fintech consultant. "That is the underlying technology SBI wants in all debit cards issued over the next three years."

NFC allows two devices to communicate and exchange data, such as payment information, wirelessly when they are brought close to each other. While far more prevalent in advanced economies, payments via wearable NFC devices, including Apple Pay with the Apple Watch, have seen limited innovation and adoption in India.