The Hindu Business Line : Tata group, SBI launch card with loyalty theme

(From left) Mr Sonny Sannon, President, South Asia, Middle East & Africa, MasterCard International, Mr Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons Ltd; and Mr A.K. Purwar, Chairman, SBI, at the launch of Tata Credit Card in Mumbai on Wednesday. — Paul Noronha

Mumbai, Feb. 15

THE Tata group and State Bank of India on Wednesday launched a credit card in association with MasterCard International.

The Tata Credit Card, labelled as the first `credit-cum coalition loyalty card' in the country, offers the facilities of a credit card with multiple loyalty programmes, said an SBI official.

The card allows the customer to avail himself of benefits across 12 spend categories such as retail stores, fuel, durables, groceries, hospitality, airlines, automobiles jewellery, insurance, power and telecom, said Mr Roopam Asthana, CEO, SBI Cards. SBI already has a card joint venture with the GE Group.

The Tata Card holders can get benefits such as discounts and earn rewards points at Tata group companies such as Tata Motors, Voltas, Tata AIG, Westside, Star India Bazaar, Landmark bookstores, Taj Hotels, Titan, Tanishq, VSNL, Tata Indicom. The other brands associated with the card include Air India, Indian Airlines, Jet Airways and BPCL.

While the card will be marketed as a Tata Card, the SBI and GE joint venture will provide the financial services, administration and all back-end operations for the running of the card programme.

The revenue will be shared between the companies in proportion to the services they offer, said Mr Asthana."Our target for the Tata Card is 2 million customers by the end of 2006 and 5 million customers in five years," he said.

In the first phase, the card will be launched in six cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Jamshedpur, Bangalore and Hyderabad. In the second phase, which will begin in April, the card will be rolled out in all locations where SBI cards are present and where the Tata group is present.

For future tie-ups, SBI and Tata would look at more consumer spend categories and at large players in those segments.

Mr Asthana said the SBI-GE joint venture has a market share of over 14 per cent in credit cards. It is now focusing in smaller cities such as Ranchi, Raipur and Guntur. "We have 2.3 million active cards and we hope to increase it to over 3 million by December 2006," he said

SBI Cards is present in 85 locations and plans to touch 100 locations by the year-end, he added.

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