HDFC Bank, the largest private sector lender in India, foresees a ten-fold expansion in its merchant base in the next three years. If it happens so, then the bank will be able to acquire a sizable share of rapidly growing digital payment markets in India. Their estimated target of merchant base in the next three years is more than 20 million.
Recently, HDFC Bank had introduced SmartHub Merchant Solution 3.0, which is a new platform that provides instant banking and payment solutions for its merchants. Officials of the bank said that, through the newly launched platform, merchants and self-employed professionals can immediately open a current account and start getting payments both through physical and digital channels.
SmartHub Merchant Solution 3.0 is connected with the global card network Visa, to permit faster payment solutions. Its characteristics also include digitizing Khata, enabling collection reminders, inventory management, billing software, lending to merchant basis banking history, etc. The users will be able to get their payments in various forms and, it permits millions of merchants to propose a superior experience to their customers. Thus it fosters the growth of their business.
Parag Rao (Head of Payments, Consumer Finance, Marketing, and Digital Banking) commented that the merchant base target of HDFC Bank in the next three years is more than 20 million. It includes small and medium merchants, professional services such as doctors, pharmacies, salons, laundry services across metro, semi-urban and rural areas, etc.
Rao added to his statement that, as small and medium businesses are the backbone of the Indian economy, it is important to empower these merchant networks with high quality and best range of solutions. Therefore, the digital forms of payment across India should be deepened. As of the Financial Year 2020, HDFC Bank had about 2 million merchants network. They had operated about 48% of the overall card transactions at the merchant level in terms of volumes and about one-fourth of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volumes.
HDFC Bank Limited is a financial services company headquartered in Mumbai. It is the largest private sector bank in India in terms of its assets. As per the record of March 2020, HDFC is the largest bank in India in terms of its market capitalization.
