RBI Orders HDFC Bank To Stop Digital Launches, New Credit Cards

New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked HDFC Bank to temporarily stop all launches of its upcoming digital business-generating activities and sourcing of new credit card customers, the bank said on Thursday.

The RBI directive came after an outage at HDFC Bank’s data centre impacted operations last month, news agency PTI reported.

“RBI has issued an order dated December 2, 2020, to HDFC Bank Ltd 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,” HDFC Bank said in a regulatory filing.

HDFC Bank said the RBI order “has advised the bank to temporarily stop all launches of the digital business-generating activities planned under its program Digital 2.0 and other proposed business generating IT applications and sourcing of new credit card customers”.

In addition, the order has directed the bank board to examine the lapses and fix accountability, HDFC Bank added.

The private sector lender said the above measures shall be lifted upon satisfactory compliance with the major critical observations made by the RBI.

HDFC Bank said, “Over the last two years, it has taken several measures to fortify its IT systems and will continue to work swiftly to close out the balance and engage with the regulator in this regard.”