KOLKATA: State Bank of India (SBI) will become more aggressive in taking on competition arising from new payments banks, small finance banks and other entities, its Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said today. “There will be a host of small finance banks, payments banks, foreign banks and two new universal banks which together will heat up competition in the banking sector in the country”, Bhattacharya said at an ICC interaction here. To take on the competition, she said that SBI would rather adopt an aggressive strategy by offering more digital products and ramping up the business correspondents (BC) model. Even China’s largest commercial bank ICBC was doing similar things, she said. “As the country moves from being underbanked to properly banked, competition will hot up and it is better to become offensive”, Bhattacharya said. Regarding payments banks, she said “whether such banks will have viability only on transactions is a question.” Justifying the bank’s JV with Reliance Industries’ telecom arm for payments banks, Bhattacharya said it was to leverage the spectrum of the telecom company and the banking expertise of SBI which has the potential to become a profitable entity.