Comments
In a big setback to the country’s largest private sector lender HDFC Bank, the Reserve Bank of India has directed it to temporarily halt sourcing of new credit card customers as well as launches of digital business generating activities planned under its proposed programme ‐ Digital 2.0.
The directive comes soon after a sudden outage at one of HDFC Bank’s data centres impacted its digital and mobile banking and ATM and payment services on November 21.
“The RBI vide Order has advised the Bank to temporarily stop all launches of the Digital Business generating activities planned under its programme,Digital 2.0 (to be launched), and other proposed business generating IT applications and sourcing of new credit card customers,” HDFC Bank said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
Lapses in the system
The RBI in its order has also asked the bank’s board to examine the lapses and fix accountability for the incident.
“The RBI has issued an Order dated December 2, 2020 to HDFC Bank with regard to certain incidents of outages in the internet banking/ mobile banking/payment utilities of the bank over the past two years, including the recent outages in the Bank’s internet banking and payment system on November 21, 2020 due to a power failure in the primary data centre,” the bank further said.
In the past, HDFC Bank’s Internet and Mobile banking services had been impacted for three working days in December last year and many customers had been unable to make transactions at the time. Prior to that a mobile banking app launch had also faced difficulties.
HDFC Bank, in the regulatory filing, however, said that it has taken several measures over the last two years to fortify its IT systems and will continue to work swiftly to close the balance and would work with the RBI on the issue.
“The Bank has been taking conscious, concrete steps to remedy the recent outages on its digital banking channels and assures its customers that it expects the current supervisory actions will have no impact on its existing credit cards, digital banking channels and existing operations,” it further said, adding that it believes that these measures will not materially impact its overall business.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.