HDFC Bank Barred From Adding Credit Card Customers After Power Outage

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has barred HDFC Bank from adding new credit card customers or launching digital businesses after its digital payment services were hit by technical outages last month. In an order dated December 2, 2020, the central bank also took note of the most recent outage on November 21, which occurred due to a power failure in the primary data centre of the country’s largest lender by market value. The RBI has asked HDFC Bank’s board to examine the lapses and fix accountability, the private sector lender said in a regulator filing on Thursday

On November 21, HDFC Bank’s digital payments business was down for more than 12 hours, following a power outage in its primary data centre. The RBI has advised the bank to temporarily stop all launches of its digital business-generating activities planned under Digital 2.0 and halt the sourcing of new credit card customers.

“The above measures shall be considered for lifting, upon satisfactory compliance with the major critical observations as identified by the RBI,” HDFC Bank said.

The bank reassured its customers that it expects the current supervisory actions to have no impact on its existing credit cards, digital banking channels and existing operations, and believes that these measures will not materially impact its overall business.