IDBI Bank joins the credit card bandwagon

 

 

Nearly nine years after becoming a full-fledged commercial bank, IDBI Bank has decided to issue credit cards to its customers. The Mumbai-headquartered bank intends to issue around five lakh cards in three years — one lakh in the first year and two lakh cards each in the following two years. The public sector bank, which currently has a base of more than 10 million customers, will be issuing EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) chip cards with magnetic stripes. EMV is a global security standard for microprocessor chip card technology. This ensures that the credit card is not only accepted anywhere in the world but is also better protected against fraudulent activities. Since many merchant establishments in the country still have credit card payment infrastructure (terminals) that accept cards with magnetic stripe, the bank has decided to issue EMV cards with magnetic stripe. The category of credit cards that the bank plans to issue are: Platinum, Signature and Corporate. For foraying into the credit cards space, IDBI Bank is planning to engage the services of a third party service (TPS) provider for providing end-to-end solutions for credit card issuance under the outsourced model.