After getting relief from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), HDFC Bank’s credit card sales have started. The bank has received lakhs of credit card applications in the first 2-3 days itself. The first focus of the bank is to make up for its losses in the last 8-9 months.
Target to issue 5 lakh cards every month from February 2022
The bank said the target is to issue 5 lakh credit cards every month. This target will be started from February 2022. This will enable the bank to regain the market share that the bank lost due to sanctions. The bank said that it will achieve the leadership position in credit cards in the next 9-12 months.
Bank partnered with Paytm
The bank has tied up with Paytm. Under this, the bank will make the services of digital banking available personally and to the merchants. With this partnership, payment gateway and point of sale (PoS) will be introduced for merchants. Under this, the sales team of HDFC Bank will sell Paytm’s payment solution in the market. HDFC will be the payment partner, while Paytm will be the distribution and software partner.
Credit products will be available later
The bank said that it will later offer credit products such as Paytm’s Buy Now-Pay Later solution, Easy Monthly Installment (EMI) and Flexi Pay through Paytm. Together, the two will launch a co-branded PoS product for the retail segment.
Paytm is the largest payment firm in the country. It has 333 million users. There are 21 million merchants platforms. Parag Rao, Group Head, Payments, Consumer Finance, Digital Banking, Bank, said that HDFC Bank’s partnership will help bring various digital banking services to the customers. This will include services like banking, payments, lending.
The ban was lifted last week
The country’s largest private sector HDFC Bank was last week approved by the Reserve Bank to issue credit cards. In December, the Reserve Bank had banned HDFC Bank from issuing new credit cards. HDFC Bank issued 1.54 crore credit cards in December 2020. In January 2021, their number decreased to 1.48 crore. SBI has issued a total of 1.2 crore credit cards. ICICI Bank has issued 90 lakh credit cards.
Bad effect on business
HDFC Bank’s credit card business was hit hard due to the ban. ICICI Bank and SBI got the direct benefit of this. RBI took this action due to repeated technical problems in HDFC Bank. Along with this, it was also banned from taking any new digital initiative. This ban is still in place. Recently, Parag Rao, Digital Head of the bank said that we have used 6 months to improve the card business. We have over 15 crore credit card customers.
Audit order in February
In February this year, the Reserve Bank had appointed a firm to audit its IT department in the same matter. In January, HDFC Bank submitted its plan to the RBI to deal with the recurring bottleneck. The bank had said that it would completely revamp its IT infrastructure in three months. In this case, a fine of Rs 10 lakh has also been imposed on the bank.
The error was found on 21 November
On November 21, a glitch was found in the bank’s internet banking and payment system. The fault was caused by a power failure in the primary data center. In December, the RBI had said that all new digital programs would have to be stopped by the bank. This was the third major setback for the bank in two years. HDFC Bank is preparing to launch its Digital 2.0, in which a lot of digital channels will be launched.
