HDFC Bank's mobile recharge via missed call

HDFC Bank, the country’s second largest private sector lender, is planning to come up with a service that will allow customers to recharge their mobile phones by giving a missed call to the bank.

For this, customers would need to register their numbers with the lender and authorise the amount  by which they want to get their phone recharged. And thereafter the customer gives a missed call and their phone will be recharged automatically and the amount debited from the bank account.

“We are looking at lunching this service in the next two-three months. At present we will be offering it only for bank customers. Going ahead we may look at offering it even to the credit card customers,” said Nitin Chugh, head-digital banking, HDFC Bank.

Since over 80 per cent of the telecom customer base in India is on prepaid and also it is one of the most frequently done transactions even on the mobile banking applications, it made sense to offer a simpler solution for this.

The minimum amount of recharge that can be done has been kept limited to Rs 10 and the maximum up to Rs 250. Considering that the average mobile recharge ticket size for prepaid continues to be less than Rs 100, the bank thinks that the limit set by them will be sufficient. It also allows you to add up to three members of the family on this service.

Like several other services launched in the past, this is in line with the bank’s digital strategy that it had embarked on about a year ago. “The idea has been to become a full-service digital bank and to make everything simpler using digital. So the missed call for recharging your phone is in line with that philosophy,” Chugh added.