US private equity firm Carlyle’s affiliate CA Rover Holdings has sold its 5.1% stake or 48 million shares in SBI Cards and Payments Services for $649.08m (INR48.11bn).

As per the data available on exchanges, 37.42 million shares were sold for an average price of $13.52 (INR1002.2) per share and 10 million shares at $13.53 (INR1002.64) per shares.

As per the stock exchange, Morgan Stanley Asia bought 5.41 million shares for a total sum of $73.12m (INR5.42bn).

CA Rover Holdings held an 11.61% stake in SBI Cards as of 31 March 2021.

In March, it offloaded nearly 4% stake worth $513m in SBI Cards & Payment Services.

SBI Cards went public in March 2020. Shares of SBI Card fell over 4.3% on Friday to close at $13.57 (INR1005.70).

SBI Cards and Payment Services reported a 110% rise in net profit at $23.61m (INR1.7bn) for the March 2021 quarter against $11.33m (INR840m) in the same quarter of the previous year.

SBI Card launched operations in 1998 as a joint venture between the State Bank of India and GE Capital.

In 2017, GE Capital exited the joint venture selling its 40% stake to SBI and Carlyle. Carlyle picked a 26% interest in SBI Card from GE Capital in December 2017.

In November 2020, Mastercard forged a partnership with SBI Cards & Payments Services. Under this partnership, Mastercard launched contactless payments on the SBI Card mobile app.

In the same month, Paytm partnered with SBI Card to roll out co-branded contactless credit cards.