HDFC partner with Apple, Samsung to offer major discounts to customers

HDFC Bank on Monday announced a partnership with thousands of brands including Apple, Samsung and Reliance Digital to offer major deals and discounts to customers across several of its banking products. HDFC Bank appears to be taking the battle on consumption straight to e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart with a three-month-long campaign. With these partnerships, HDFC is offering some of the best possible deals and discounts on transactions through its platform. HDFC Bank also listed out targets for merchant acquisitions. HDFC said it aims for a 5-per-cent-points-reduction in its cost-to-income ratio as a result of the 'digital push.' This comes at a time when the massive decline in consumption is being blamed for the overall economic gloom pulling down GDP to a six-year low in June quarter at a 5 per cent.

Amazon sold Rs 750 Cr worth of smartphones on Day 1 of festival sale

HDFC partners with thousands of brands

HDFC announced major discounts by tying up with more than 1,000 major brands such as Reliance Digital, Samsung, Apple etc and also featuring offers on all banking products. The discounts will be available on both its debit and credit, HDFC bank said.

"You get mega offers on Flipkart and Amazon for three-four days alone. We are launching this campaign for three months," managing director and chief executive Aditya Puri said.

Puri said HDFC Bank would compete to earn as much share of a customer's wallet as possible. Puri also said the bank would aggregate offers from across merchants and provide its users with the best offers on its website. It is targeting to have a complete omnichannel presence which will help a user do banking transactions, loans and shopping across channels like net banking and mobile app by March, he said. HDFC Bank is also adding 1 million merchant touchpoints this fiscal and aiming for a similar number next fiscal. This way, the bank plans to add up to 5 million merchant touchpoints by 2021, which is mainly possible through digital solutions like QR codes and smartphone-based apps, he said. He also added using this also helps drive down the costs compared to the expensive card swipe machines.

Big Billion Days: Walmart-owned Flipkart sees 2 times growth on Day-1

HDFC Bank appears to be investing heavily on digitisation. Through a variety of initiatives, HDFC Bank is targeting to significantly reduce its cost to income ratio by 5 per cent points to the 35 per cent in the next five years, Puri said. However, he said that the bank would continue to hire people and also open branches, which will be smaller in size and will act primarily like a sales and service outlet for customers.

(With PTI inputs)