Stop selling new credit cards, RBI warns HDFC Bank

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday asked HDFC Bank to temporarily stop sourcing new credit cards and halt the launch of its digital business-generating activities planned under Digital 2.0 and other projected business creating IT applications. The RBI issued the order dated December 2, 2020, to the Bank.

The action from the apex bank comes after the central bank on November 23 sought a clarification from HDFC Bank after its digital services were disturbed from the evening of November 21 till November 22 morning. The order also mentions that HDFC Bank’s board must inspect the gaps and fix accountability.

The customers recently complained of the payment stack being inoperative. The bank in reply said there was an unexpected outage at one of its data centres. HDFC Bank has had multiple failures in respect to digital services with their customers complaining of failure to conduct internet banking, credit and debit card transactions, UPI and other modes of payment.

According to various reports, the current measures will be lifted by the RBI once it is fulfilled of the compliance with serious observations it has made concerning the bank.