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Bijoy Ghosh

Co-branded card for book lovers: (From left) Ms Hemu Ramaiah, CEO, Landmark; Ms Sania Mirza, product ambassador and tennis star; Mr Shameek Bhargava, Director and Head Cards, Asia Pacific, Deutsche Bank, at the launch of Deutsche Bank Landmark Credit Card, in Chennai on Wednesday. –

Our Bureau

Chennai, Nov. 14 Would you like to put your family photo on your credit card? Customer-chosen photo on the plastic is something that Deutsche Bank is planning to bring out soon.

Deutsche Bank is the new kid on the block in the Indian credit cards business. It launched its cards business only about a year-and-a-half ago and has issued since 350,000 cards. Mr Shameek Bhargava, Director & Head of Credit Cards, Asia Pacific, Deutsche Bank, says (without sharing numbers) that spends on the cards are better than the industry average.

The new kid has this trick up its sleeve. Even now, it is possible for a customer to choose one from a catalogue of pictures to put on the card—Deutsche Bank has the technology to customise the card to that extent.

But what if you want a picture of your choice on the card ?

According to Mr Bhargava, the bank is in the process of putting in place a mechanism for screening the pictures—so that less-than-honourable pictures do not get on to Deutsche Bank’s credit cards. Once the mechanism is in place, customers would have the facility.

Being young in this business, Deutsche Bank realises that its card would be the second or the third in its customer’s wallet. How to goad him to pick up only the Deutsche Bank card at the counter? Mr Bhargava says that the bank has found in its experience that if the customer has his favourite picture on the card, he naturally tends to use it more.

Deutsche Bank seems to have a different approach to the cards business, which is typically a volumes game. It wants to identify “segments” among customers based on card use, build schemes around such uses and sell cards to such segments. It has so far identified four such segments—travel, shopping, home needs and dining. Hence, if a customer felt he used the card more for buying air tickets, he could use a scheme that gives more reward points for such use. The customer may also change his scheme to another segment—say, dining—if he felt his use became more in that segment.

Today, it launched a co-branded card with Landmark, meant to attract customers of the retail chain, who are typically lovers of books and music. The first card was received by Ms Sania Mirza, who is Deutsche Bank’s brand ambassador for retail products.

More Stories on : Credit Cards & Debit Cards | Strategy | Foreign Banks

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