Goa assembly speaker Ramesh Tawadkar on Friday dismissed the disqualification petition filed by the Congress against eight of its MLAs who defected to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in 2022.
The banking regulator was uncomfortable with the runaway pace at which consumer credit was growing.
Debit card payments remained sluggish due to the surge in digital transactions after the pandemic, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has emerged as the most popular mode of money transfer, particularly for small value transactions, according to RBI data. In July 2020, the total debit card spends stood at Rs 2.81 trillion, as compared to Rs 3.15 trillion in July 2023, reflecting a growth of 11.96 per cent. UPI spends have seen a whopping growth of 428 per cent, zooming from Rs 2.90 trillion to Rs 15.33 trillion during the same period, the data revealed.
HDFC Bank has reshuffled the portfolios of its senior management team. This is the first major rejig after the amalgamation of HDFC Ltd on July 1. "The runway for our growth is large. This change is being done to bring in a very sharp focus on leveraging what we have built and for enhanced execution," said Sashidhar Jagdishan, managing director and chief executive of HDFC Bank, explaining the reason for this overhaul.
Looking to regain lost ground in the credit cards segment, HDFC Bank on Monday announced a tie-up with leading payments company Paytm to start selling co-branded plastics before the onset of the festive season. The credit cards will be powered by Visa and will include offerings targeted at millennials, business owners and merchants, an official statement said. Paytm has a reach of over 330 million consumers and 21 million merchants, while HDFC Bank has over 5 million debit, credit and prepaid cards, and serves 2 million merchants through its offerings.
With the banking regulator lifting restrictions on HDFC Bank's digital initiatives, the largest private sector lender is now girding up to launch a clutch of customer-facing applications (apps), which will act as stepping stones in its journey to morph into a technology (tech)-led bank from a conventional one. Following repeated outages in its digital offerings, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had barred HDFC Bank from issuing new credit cards in December 2020 and prevented it from going ahead with its digital launches. The embargo on issuing credit cards was lifted in August 2021 and the ban on digital launches was lifted last week.
While HDFC Bank has vowed to recoup its lost market share in the credit card segment in three to four quarters by aggressively sourcing new cards, brokerages believe it is a little hard to come by, given how competitive the landscape has become, with other players in the market becoming equally aggressive to gain market share. Kotak Institutional Equities in its report on Monday said, "We would like to believe that the recovery in market share is likely to be gradual, if any. "All the key players, including Axis Bank, are now willing to expand their credit card portfolios as they have tested quite well against Covid-19."
A merchant using the bank's merchant App, QR code, PoS or Payment gateways, across all segments, including electronics, apparel, grocery, stand to win assured cashback and prizes on volume build-up, EMI or digital transactions.
Changes in lifestyle due to aspects like lockdowns and work from home has created additional demand for items such as television sets, laptops, Wi-Fi routers and even vacuum cleaners, which the bank is funding at present.
HDFC Bank managing director Aditya Puri on Wednesday said the lender's business is returning to pre-COVID-19 levels and full normalcy is expected to be restored soon.
HDFC Bank on Monday said it aims to regain the two per cent market share in the credit card market it ceded to rivals during a recent ban, within a year by aggressively tapping into its existing depositor base. The bank will also focus on forging new partnerships to sell more cards and will not deviate from its conservative approach on taking credit risks as it goes aggressive in the market, its group head for payments and consumer finance, digital banking and IT, Parag Rao, told reporters. On August 17, RBI lifted the ban on HDFC Bank which had prevented it from issuing new credit cards from December 2020.
As part of its 'go-green' initiative, HDFC Bank has started sending PIN, unique code number, for debit card holders through SMS instead of the practice of sending it by post.
Customers would be able to make money transfers, pay utility bills and recharge their mobile and DTH connections with just one click and a single PIN entry
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Cardholders must ensure their debit cards are used in their presence.
Lender had 5.12 mn cards - almost a third of the total number of credit cards in the industry - at the end of November, 2013.
Prepaid one offered by HDFC Bank and Apollo Hospitals gives discounts but one needs to spend it at designated hospitals and pharmacies to avail benefits