Retail products and services are making banks' bottom line robust, besides reducing the risk level. Banks should offer those retail products that satisfy customers' desires and need to look for new delivery channels. Banks are adopting innovative technology, which is helping them to offer customized products in a cost efficient manner.

The dictionary meaning of "retail" is either selling in small quantities or selling to a consumer. This is a general term used to signify either the target beneficiary, the "size" or the "lot" of the commodity traded. The sale, therefore, to be qualified as "retail" should benefit the consumer directly or the quantity of the product delivered should be "small" in size.

Banking is defined in the Banking Regulation Act as the activity of acceptance of deposits of money from the public repayable on demand or otherwise for the purpose of lending or for investment. The basic concept of banking, therefore, remains unalterable and sacrosanct, limiting the scope to the acceptance of deposits of money solely for the purpose of lending or investment. A crude form of limiting the definition of banking reduces the activity to that of sourcing of deposits of money and using the same for lending or for investment. However, over the decades, the meaning of acceptance of deposits of money and the activity of lending have undergone dynamic changes and banking companies have been permitted over the years to engage in an array of business involving buying or selling of products or services.

The common understanding about the term "wholesale" is "sale by the whole piece or in large quantity or to a retailer". Going by the definition, though wholesale is not exactly the opposite of retail, it could be viewed either as sale of large quantity of products or services or that sale which would eventually deliver the products or services to the consumer through the intermediation of a retailer or through a retail outlet. In other words wholesale needn't always disfigure retail; it can act as a catalyst for hastening the retail process. Nevertheless, wholesale consists essentially of sale of product and service in quantities or size that measure up to more than that ordinarily consumed by the consumers.

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