HDFC Bank to allow shopping, money transfer, ticket booking via one application

If you want to shop on Flipkart, or book movie tickets via bookmyshow.com or recharge your phone, you can just log in to one mobile application and complete all these transactions.

After a slew of other digital initiatives, HDFC Bank will launch PayZapp on Monday for its debit and credit card holders. It is intended to serve as a one-stop solution for both payments and purchase.

Currently, the service is limited to bank customers. Going ahead, the lender is looking at other bank customers to transact via this application. After downloading the application, customers need to link their debit or credit card to the account. Customers who do not want to link their cards can load their mobile wallet.

Parag Rao, senior executive vice-president and business head, card payment products, HDFC, explained since the card would be already linked, the transactions would be much faster. “We see that in about 70 per cent of e-tailing purchase, the mode of payment is cash on delivery and that is mostly because of the inconvenience of payments. This is more when the transaction is via mobile phones but with an application like PayZapp, the process will become much faster,” he added.

The bank has tied up with 18 merchants. Within the next 45 days, they plan to scale up to 10,000 merchants. Going ahead, the bank plans to launch quick response (QR )code-based payments, contactless payments using mobile, financial planning tools, e-vault for storing important documents and similar services.

Aditya Puri, managing director, HDFC Bank, said the bank embarked on the digital strategy after several investors cautioned him that banking was going to become “obsolete” and banks are going to be a “dinosaur”, as technology players were looking at ways to oust lenders.

“When I went to meet them in Silicon Valley, I realised that the most common phrase they were using was over-the-top — over the top of my banking system, my customers, my merchants, my cards. So, they will use the network to create a more convenient solution which was expected to disrupt us. We decided that if all this was with us, then how they could disrupt us until and unless we buried our head in the sand?” he said.

With the increased focus on digital, as of end-March, 63 per cent of HDFC Bank’s transactions were via the internet (including mobiles) as compared to 55 per cent a year earlier.

According to Reserve Bank of India data, HDFC Bank recorded transactions worth Rs 6,031 crore in the year ended March. The total value of transactions on the mobile banking platform in the sector stood at Rs 16,914 crore.