SBI to list its credit card business, aims to raise $1.1 billion

SBI Card is all set to run in the IPO process, and the listing is reportedly expected to happen in the last quarter of this financial year.

The officials involved in the process, who asked not to be named 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.”

It is expected to fetch an overall business of around 1 trillion rupees. SBI card at present is 74% owned by SBI and 26% by the U.S. based equity firm Carlyle Group (CG. O). Carlyle has total assets worth around 196 billion rupees.

India’s debit card market is bigger than the credit card market. The recent regulatory data shows that there were around 836 million debit card users in contrast to only 49.6 million credit card users.

With 8.8 million outstanding cards, SBI Card is the second largest card issuer in India. HDFC Bank is the biggest issuer of cards in India.

SBI is looking to raise capital by selling its investment in non-core assets. In 2017, the bank listed its SBI Life Insurance in 84 billion rupees IPO. SBI Cards will be the second subsidiary of the bank to be listed.