It could not be immediately determined what caused the issue but an HDFC Bank official said their IT teams were looking into it and the issue was not widespread.
“Some users have complained about facing difficulties in processing transactions, it’s not a widespread issue, our IT teams are looking into the issue to ensure smooth delivery of our services,” said a bank official. “Meanwhile, we apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers.”
HDFC Bank, which issues nearly 150,000 credit cards a month, had been directed by the regulator to stop doing so on December 12 until it had sorted out the problems. The bank also couldn’t launch any new digital initiatives. Last month, the Reserve Bank of India appointed an external IT firm for carrying out special audit of HDFC Bank’s IT infrastructure.
ET was first to report that the lender had submitted a plan to the RBI outlining remedies for repeated glitches in the bank’s technology platform.
The bank is working on multiple immediate and long-term solutions as part of its internal review. “The action plan that the bank is working on could take anywhere between 10-12 weeks to implement,” a bank official had told analysts in January. “From there on, it’s up to the regulator to inspect the progress and take a call on lifting sanctions.”
In December, CEO Sasidhar Jagdishan had apologised to customers for the disruptions and asked them to continue transacting with the bank. The RBI’s move was a blow to the bank’s ambition to expand its digital payments business, where it commands a 40% market share. HDFC Bank is a systemically important lender with a 10% share of the loans market and 26% of the credit card business.
The regulator’s action followed the bank’s inability to fix the problem despite formal instructions over the past few years. ET had reported that the regulator had raised the issue with the bank during its periodic inspections as customers and payments systems were being put at risk because of such interruptions.
HDFC Bank faced its first big outage in November 2018 while upgrading its mobile application and internet banking facilities. A year later, in December 2019, it faced another outage, forcing the RBI to send its team to study the issues that the lender was facing. Since then the bank has taken steps to strengthen its IT infrastructure and systems. A disruption took place
on November 21 last year, due to a power outage in its primary data centre, resulting in the RBI’s move.
