ICICI Bank, the country's second largest bank, sold an 81 per cent stake in

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its point of sale (PoS) terminals business called ICICI Merchant Services, to US-based electronic commerce and payment services company, First Data Corporation (FDC).

ICICI Bank did not disclose the price for which it sold the stake in the business but an official from one of the companies, who did not want to be identified, said the bank received over Rs 400 crore from First Data for the stake. The bank will continue to hold the remaining 19 per cent stake in the business, which involves installation of PoS terminals at shops for individuals to pay for purchases made by either a credit card or a debit card. The bank said the financial details of the deal would be available when its third quarter, ended on December 31, results are published on January 21. Sandeep Bakshi, deputy managing director of ICICI Bank, said, “The sale would be reflected in our third quarter results, so we would not want to reveal the deal size. ICICI Bank’s M&A advisory team has been the sole advisor to this transaction and the entire deal structure and negotiations has been done by this team.”

“It was essential that we have a joint venture with a global best practices company as we had reached a tipping point and needed to scale it up to the next level,” Bakshi added. India has a total of 0.5 million PoS terminals which is expected to grow to 1.2 million terminals. “Regulatory direction is gravitating towards electronic card payments, and we expect to capture 30 to 40 per cent of this growth. We will have specialised services like utility bill payments and top-ups for mobile phones,” said B Amrish Rau, vice president and country manager, First Data Corporation. First Data, a KKR-portfolio company, which provides payment processing services for 5.3 million merchant locations globally and serves customers in 36 countries.