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After a retail digital push, in a first for the wholesale clients, HDFC Bank has forayed into providing trade finance transactions on the mobile phone.
The bank launched the ‘Trade Finance on mobile’ application last week.
HDFC Bank has launched the app - to provide end-to-end digitisation of Trade Finance transactions, including the last mile authorisation of these transactions.
“The on-the-go executives and senior officials, who are largely on-field and travelling, can authorise as and where they are present. In 2014, we started offering payment products such as RTGS, NEFT, fund transfer on the mobile for the wholesale banking clients.This is the first time in the industry that trade finance has moved on mobile,” said Bhavesh Zaveri, Country head – Operations, Cash management products, HDFC Bank.
This product offering involves facilitating mobile authorisation of letter of credit, bill processing, bank guarantees, buyer’s credit and pre-and post shipment transactions, which are online and real time.
“It is a unique offering that gives the ability to navigate and provide flexibility to the executives to validate it and get the process going on a real-time basis. So, it reduces the time from half a day or so to an hour or so…We expect the mobile transactions to jump into thousands in the next 3-6 months,” Zaveri added.
Broadly, the bank’s wholesale segment would include funding, trade financing (including LC, ECB, buyer’s credit) and domestic cash management.
At present, the ratio of the customer revenue mix from wholesale to retail is at 42:58. The wholesale banking business has been growing at an average of about 12 per cent per annum.
As on year ending March end 2015, HDFC Bank recorded transactions worth Rs 6,031 crore with total value of transactions on the mobile banking platform in the sector at Rs 16,914 crore, as per RBI data.
Currently, the number of transactions per year through trade finance stands at almost 2 million and the average wholesale banking business has been growing at about 10-12 per cent.
About 35 per cent of total transactions are through mobile banking, while about 63 per cent would be online banking (including mobile), the bank had said last month.
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