Tutorial to setup SBI Corporate Internet Banking and User Management

[RaviAgl]

The Target Audience​

You will benefit from this post only if –

• You are operating a corporate (or company) account in the State Bank of India.
• You want to setup internet banking for your Company Account.
• SBI and its employees are being extremely unhelpful, either because they are too busy, or they are being too arrogant and most likely, they themselves don’t have a clue about how to setup the whole thing.

The need to write this document​

For the love of the Technofino community and to reduce the suffering of those who are looking for help but are still stuck in the dark.

I have been through a lot of pain to get this working. It took me around 45 days to understand and get accustomed to the whole process. The SBI website and the videos on the internet are completely useless and are not worth wasting your time. SBI has documentation on their website which is dates back to more than ten years and is not relevant today.

Different types of roles​

In order to get started, you need to understand the various roles of all the people. Each user role will have access to the assigned accounts in a very distinct and defined manner. There are 5 types with 1st (topmost) being most powerful and 5th (lowermost) with almost no powers. In order to make it simple to comprehend, let us start from the bottom of the hierarchy.

• User (and / or) Initiator at the 5th level– He generally has only viewing rights. He can view the account balances of one or more accounts which have been allotted to him. He can also download account statements for any period. If rights have been assigned, he can also initiate a transaction but the transaction will not be executed. Approval for the transaction will go to the users who have been assigned roles above him (Approver and / or Authorizer).
• File Uploader at the 4th level – He is similar to the user at the 5th level but he can only upload text files (in predefined formats) requesting bulk approval for addition or deletion of beneficiary accounts (third party accounts of suppliers, directors and other people to whom the company will be transferring funds) or multiple transactions in one go. It simplifies salary and dividend payouts to multiple beneficiaries. However, all his requests will be routed to the users with roles assigned above him (Approver and / or Authorizer).
• Approver at the 3rd level – He sits above the user and his job is to check the transactions initiated by the User. He cannot do anything but only approve (or reject) and send the transactions further up to the Authorizer (for execution) who has been assigned a role above him. Organizations with very few users actively using SBI netbanking (say 20 or less) can ignore this layer. It may cause an unnecessary delay in executing transactions thus decreasing productivity. However, organizations with a very large number of employees will find this role useful since the top management will usually be very busy and may have little time to verify a huge number of transactions. The organization can create multiple approvers as per their requirement. Therefore, the approver(s) may reject unnecessary transactions thereby reducing the workload on the top management.
• Authorizer at the 2nd level– The Authorizer has the final say in the execution of a transaction and the banking system will finally debit the corporate account when the Authorizer inputs his Transaction Password to execute the transaction. In Corporate banking, in order to execute a transaction, the computer system follows the concept of Maker and Checker (Initiator and Executer). It means that one transaction will be routed through two or more authorities before being executed. This is for the safety of the organization (to reduce frauds and cybercrimes) and also to pin down responsibility upon the various executives of the organization in a distinct fashion. Therefore, the Authorizer cannot initiate and approve his own transactions. However, he can initiate a transaction and get it authorized by someone else deputed for the same role. In other words, the Authorizer can also play the Role of an Initiator. Therefore, two authorizers can initiate and approve each other’s transactions. So, it will always need two users as per system design to execute a transaction.
• Admin at the 1st level– The job of the admin is to create users and assign roles and rights to them. He is the final authority to add and manage beneficiary accounts (third party accounts of suppliers, directors and other people to whom the company will be transferring funds). He will also be able to create Rules (account transaction limits for the authorizers), specific to the SBI netbanking portal. He himself cannot view and transact in the bank accounts which he will be managing. His role is strictly related to user and beneficiary management. Therefore, before creating a new beneficiary, it will always be sent to the admin for his approval. To further clarify, the Authorizer does not have the right to approve new beneficiaries created by other users.

Getting Started​

The home branch will generally create and issue an admin user for the desired accounts. There can be two or more accounts such as cash credit, current, term loan and such which are owned by the corporate. Generally, all those accounts will be visible in the portal. However, transaction rights are only provided for cash credit and current accounts. The other accounts will be provided with view only facility. The registration process can be initiated using the onlinesbi.sbi portal but a visit to the branch will surely be needed. So, it will be wiser for the bank to do the process for you as the portal for admin creation is pretty flawed already.

Once, you have the admin id and password in your arsenal, then you can start creating roles. The process is pretty simple but you have to take care while assigning roles.

For a start, you can create one user and one authorizer. Each needs to be someone with a unique PAN, email and phone number. The phone number can be any working mobile of your choice and need not be tied with the PAN / UID of the user deputed for the role.

The mobile number assigned can be changed using the admin role but may require branch approval on a case-to-case basis. The authorizer will receive login and transaction OTPs on the phone number assigned to him. Email will be used for notifications when raising complaints or tickets after logging in with that user role.

New User Creation Journey​

When the admin creates a user, he is required to fill in four important fields - Name, Email, Mobile Number and PAN of the user. If the admin tries to add someone who is already registered in the system with one or more of the same details, then the system will throw an error as it does not allow duplicate users.

Upon completing the user creation process, the system will send an SMS with a temporary id and a url to the new user. With this, the new user can complete the registration process at the sbi portal. In case of the new user not receiving the SMS, the admin can login using his credentials and resend the SMS to the new user.

The new user will need to click on the “New user activation” link at the login portal which will take him to the login password creation screen. After creating the password, he will need to login using the temporary id and his newly set password. After login, the sbi system will now offer the user to create a unique username of his choice. If the desired username is available, the temporary id will be replaced with that username in the sbi banking system.

He can now login using the new username which he created but the system will again force a login password change. After that, the user can set his profile and transaction passwords using the sbi portal. In case of new users, the system is designed to set them in the first attempt.

In case the user forgets his profile or transaction password, he will have the option to reset it but the process is not that simple as just feeding an OTP. The request will go to the admin and then maybe to the branch for approval depending on the user role. Therefore, make sure the user does not forget his passwords as new password generation is really painful, since it involves a lot of entities.

User Rights​

After creating the users, the admin can depute any user as an Authorizer or assign any other role to that user as per the Corporate’s requirements.

Rules​

The admin after creating the user roles needs to assign Rules to the Authorizer(s). Rule creation is basically the assigning of transaction limits and defining the number of authorizers needed to authorize the transactions. SBI have given the flexibility to the admin to allocate one or more authorizers to authorize a single transaction. There can be any number of Authorizers with varying transaction limits. Generally, any authorizer will be able to authorize a transaction if it falls within his scope.

After Rule Creation, the banking system will not implement the Rules straightaway. The admin needs to print the generated Form No. C7-A and get it stamped and signed from the relevant authorities (one or more of the Board of Directors) and then present it to the bank (via registered email or a physical hard copy) for bank approval. Once the bank approves the Form, the Authorizer(s) will be able to see the transactions which are pending for authorization. If the above process is not done, then the SBI system will generate an error – “No Authorizers for this account for a debit amount of Rs ”, when initiated by any user.

User Management​

The admin has the power the manage all the users of the corporate. He can deactivate a user, if the user has left the organisation. It is not possible to delete a user owing to system constraints.

He can change the user particulars such as mobile number and email id after logging in using his credentials. The request may or may not go to the home branch for approval depending on the role of the user. In case, branch approval is pending, then changes will be applied only after the bank has approved the changes.

In case of the Authorizer, it is not possible to modify the particulars of an Authorizer who is active and has Rules assigned to him. The admin must delete the Rules for that Authorizer and start afresh.

Merchant Payment Limit​

Since the corporate banking system is designed in such a way that it is not possible to complete a transaction using a single user id and password, it becomes painful when you try to make a bill payment or want to do a mobile recharge which demands immediate confirmation. Sbi provided a direct debit facility for this. You need to create a Merchant Payment Limit using this 3 step process -

• The admin will need to enable Merchant Payment Limits using his id.
• A normal user needs to initiate a request to create a Merchant Payment Limit with a predefined amount.
• The Authorizer will need to authorize this limit using his login credentials.

With this done, the authorizer can now directly make online payments for taxes, utilities and other such portals like a normal retail user without needing to first initiate and then authorize the transaction.

However, the merchant limit will be reduced by that amount for which each payment is made, means it is inversely cumulative and the limit will compulsorily expire on the 10th day of creation.

After this, the merchant limit needs to be created again using the above second and third steps. There are other granular details which are not worth discussing but are pretty self explanatory and already outlined in the sbi portal itself.

File Uploader​

The file uploader user role is a different chapter, altogether. SBI has defined a pretty strict text format which needs to be adhered to while creating a transaction or beneficiary file. If the data is in the right order, approval for beneficiary management will go to the admin and approval for transactions will go to the authorizer.

One critical thing to remember is that all beneficiaries in a transaction file need to be created beforehand else the portal will throw weird errors. These errors will be too difficult to comprehend even for an IT professional, leave alone the normal user.

Raising Tickets and Complaints​

Any user can create a ticket using his credentials. Authorizers generally receive a responsive in one working day and other users may get a response in two days or maybe earlier. Their support mechanism is good with a proper solution to your query most of the time. It was their ticket complaint system and the broken literature on their website which helped me wade through their murky waters finally.

Closing Comments​

All in all, I believe that even though I am familiar with the banking system and the IT industry, it took me a lot of time to understand everything and get it all working as I wanted. For the average user, it sure will be a nightmare if he starts from scratch with no one to guide him. I hope this post helps such people.

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Thanks and Cheers!!

 

[D₹V]

TLDR
Nice + happy for you.
/S