SUMMARY
HDFC Bank MD said that the bank will launch new products and services under its Digital 2.0 program, including new payments platforms, in partnership with new-age tech companies
‘Enterprise Factory’ policy created to build a long-term vision on revamping core banking and mobile channel experiences, Jagdishan said in the bank’s annual report for FY22
The move to create a new digital payments platform comes at a time when the bank has been marred by a slew of technical glitches for more than two years now
HDFC Bank, the country’s largest private lender, plans to overhaul its digital services. As part of this, the company will partner with new-age tech companies to launch a slew of services, including a new payments platform for its customers.
“In the next few quarters, we will launch more of our products and services under Digital 2.0 including a new payments platform for our customers, payments platform for our merchants and a wealth platform – all in partnerships with new age tech companies”, HDFC Bank MD and CEO Sashidhar Jagdishan said in the bank’s annual report for the year 2021-22.
As part of this, the bank will spin off a separate payments module from its existing core banking platform to ensure minimal downtime.
“This project will enable the moving out of payments module from existing core banking platform and help in creating a fully resilient active payments architecture that will ensure minimal payments downtime, even if core banking is not available,” said Jagdishan.
The bank said that the project will continue over a period of 15 months, which will be followed by ‘hollowing the customer master modules from its existing core systems and will ensure a single system of record for customers across various products’.
Jagdishan also said that the bank has created its ‘Enterprise Factory’ to build a long-term vision on revamping its core banking and mobile channel experiences.
“…we have created our ‘Enterprise Factory’ wherein the bank’s tech and digital teams work in a new age startup-like environment and co-create deep tech IP (intellectual property) capabilities,” he said.
The move has been conceptualised to cut the dependence on external players and build in-house technological capabilities to power the bank. The move to create a new digital payments platform comes at a time when the bank has been marred by a slew of technical glitches for more than two years now.
Earlier last month, a technical glitch at the bank reportedly turned many customers millionaires after INR 13 Cr were deposited in each of the 100 bank accounts at a Chennai branch for a brief period of time. The bank has also been in the line of fire for multiple outages which render customers unable to access mobile banking application services.
Such was the furore that even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had to intervene. In December 2020, the central bank ordered the bank to temporarily halt all digital business generating activities under its Digital 2.0 program as well as onboarding of new credit card customers following multiple outages at the bank.
The restrictions were partially lifted in August last year after RBI allowed the private bank to issue new credit cards. The ban on the launch of new digital activities was lifted in March this year.
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