with and deals are available there is a higher chance of you actually consuming it indian banks are not the first ones trying to capture the space where retail marketplace companies are growing by leaps and bounds in fact chinas biggest lender industrial and commercial bank of china or icbc attempted to be a retailer taking cues from alibaba which revolutionised the online markets and payments system when icbc began re tailing in a limited way there was a lot of optimism but that began to fade since customer choice was so wide that as a bank it was unable to meet their demands they started offering services like car purchase gucci bags and prada says piyush gupta ceo of dbs bank singapore only the services that are related to bank ing products in the marketplace do very well w h i le b a n k s may be enthusiastic about the potential the digi tal world offers them some are cautious few have illusions about capturing the retail space but the efforts are focused on holding onto their payments turf since we are banks we cant do anything other than banking says parag rao country head for card payment products merchant acquiring services and marketing at hdfc bank i am not directly competing with anyone all i am saying is that if you want singleclick authentication faster checkouts along with multiple things to buy from come to the bank application only to become a marketplace there are other hurdles too for banks that are heavily regulated doing anything beyond banking is almost impossible even organising the essentials of retailing could be beyond them it may be easy to tie up with merchants who are already on digital platforms but fullfledged retailing requires an enormous buildup of a logistics platform which is difficult for banks to manage it makes good sense for banks to facilitate selling of air and rail tickets and hotel reservations through their platforms says bhavik hathi managing director alvarez marsal a corporate consultant however banks cannot enter into selling of physical merchandise because it involves a whole new idea around logistics which is going to be a nightmare banks will end up burning cash which the rbi will not entertain the success of the marketplace model for banks also depends on the number of customers the bank has more than the products it offers if you have the customer footprint of sbi then you have the capacity says gupta of dbs would people take it as a good brand for selling other products it goes back to customer and consumer psychology yes bank in existence for about a decade partners with marketplaces rather than compete with them including integrating with phonepe an arm of flipkart even kotak mahindra bank has tied up with the likes of flipkart and goibibo to facilitate smooth pay ments through its applications for the younger generation we cannot go with offtheshelf products and they are very particular about the