India's HDFC Bank to regain market share in credit cards

The headquarters of HDFC bank is pictured in Mumbai.

MUMBAI - India's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank aims to regain market share in credit cards in the next 3 - 4 quarters after the central bank removed a ban imposed more than eight months ao.

The bank plans to issue up to 300,000 credit cards from next month, which will be scaled up for up to half a million in the coming months, Parag Rao, Group Head-Payments at HDFC Bank, said in a press briefing on Monday.

We have significant headroom to grow. our conservative approach to credit will continue, Rao added : our dominant focus on offering credit cards to its own bank customers will continue.

In December, the central bank barred the bank from issuing new credit cards due to outages in the bank's digital payment services.

As of May, HDFC market share in the cards segment had fallen by two percent points, according to a Macquarie report, but it is still the largest card issuer in India, commanding almost 24% of the total market.