The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked the HDFC Bank, which happens to be the largest private-sector lender, to halt any further digital launches as well as stop the sourcing of new credit cards to customers, on Thursday morning. This decision was made due to the various backlashes that the bank faced due to certain technical errors in the last two years.

The HDFC Bank commented earlier that the RBI has ordered them to stop the launch of any digitally generated activities that were currently under their wings Digital 2.0 is one such program to be launched among many others. They were also asked to stop generating credit cards for customers. They have also been asked to check the glitches and fix them immediately. 

This action was inspired by a number of incidents where internet banking, mobile banking, online payments, etc were facing issues. In fact, the bank faced many such issues on internet banking on November 21st, 2020, which were caused by a power failure in the primary data core.  

In December 2019, HDFC Bank faced two similar power outages that affected its online banking operations, such as internet banking and mobile banking. Following this unfortunate incident, the RBI had asked them to investigate and fix the issue. The issues faced by customers with HDFC Bank’s online operations are not new. In November 2018, the bank attempted to create a new version of the app but customers were seen complaining about not being able to log in and the bank was forced to restore the older version. 

The bank’s managing director, Sashi Jagdishan, apologized to the customers and spoke of making mistakes. He additionally assured to fix the problem. 

The current measures imposed by the RBI will be lifted once the bank satisfies it with the fixtures needed.