On Monday, digital payments giant Visa revealed a partnership with ICICI Bank on its 'Visa in a Box' fintech acceleration programme. Fintechs will access APIs and the developer sandbox of Visa and ICICI Bank via this partnership to quickly design, test and deploy consumer payment applications, Visa said in a statement. For its 'Visa in a Box' programme in India, ICICI Bank is the first bank to partner with Visa.

"As part of the alliance, ICICI Bank and Visa have come together to help fintechs launch their prepaid card issuing programme in India. The bank offers its financial technology, in-depth market expertise and payment solutions to accelerate innovation within the thriving fintech community," it said.

Under the alliance, ICICI Bank has launched three fintech co-branded prepaid cards, each in business banking, business expenditure management and neo banks. The statement said that the Visa-ICICI Bank collaboration would further accelerate the fintech enablement of digital issuance, lending and prepaid use cases for innovations.

T.R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa said: "As India becomes one of the epicenters for payment innovation, it is incumbent upon established players to create a collaborative ecosystem for fintechs to help contribute to India's journey of digital payment adoption. We are delighted to partner with our longstanding partner, ICICI Bank, towards this objective."

He said that Visa looks forward to combining its platform assets and experience through this partnership with ICICI to deliver a powerful kickstart for Indian fintech companies. Sudipta Roy, Head of Unsecured Assets, ICICI Bank said: "We believe that this partnership presents us with an opportunity to get innovative solutions for our customers and partners, thereby catering to the growing demand for digital solutions in the country. We look forward to witnessing some pioneering and ground-breaking innovations and solutions through this programme, which have the potential to benefit a larger audience."

According to the statement, Visa and ICICI Bank will also jointly develop programmes aimed at driving growth and innovation in their respective companies. ICICI Bank will also have access to and provide feedback to Visa's increasing network of fintech partners, part of the Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI), to get them to market as efficiently as possible.