Is Citibank’s joint venture with Reliance reliable?

Reliance Industries, which is opening stores in 30 Indian cities and towns, is forming a joint venture with Citigroup to provide retail loans and credit cards to its customers.
The investment is in the region of 4,300 to 4,500 million rupees and Citigroup is likely to hold a majority stake in the venture.
Consumer finance in India, which includes loans and credit cards, is growing at an annual pace of as much as 40 percent, with spending using credit cards totaling about 500 billion rupees a year.
Mumbai-based Reliance Retail, an arm of India’s largest company by market value, Reliance Industries, has reportedly floated an independent financial services division to provide retail loans to customers at the point of sale. It plans to offer 0% interest rates on certain transactions for goods from its stores.
Reliance Retail plans to invest $5.5 billion on setting up stores across Indian cities. It has already set up around 340 such stores across various formats. The company says its loyal customers account for 20% of the total customer base. It set up its first store in the southern city of Hyderabad last November.
Consumer finance is growing at rates in excess of 30% annually in India, with a majority of transactions in particular markets like automobiles being financed by loans. The size of the market is estimated at about $18 billion. But credit card market penetration rates are still relatively low, at about 1%.
Reliance Money isn’t the first retailer to enter the consumer finance business. Kishore Biyani’s Future Group launched a consumer finance initiative in April called Future Money. The group’s hypermarkets, Big Bazaar, have a partnership with ICICI Bank for co-branded credit cards.
Will this venture help Citigroup penetrate India’s mass market without getting misrepresented through the retail stores?