140 million HDFC Bank, Axis customers may face service interruption

UPI services will be unavailable for customers from 3:00 AM to 3:45 AM and from 9:30 AM to 12:45 PM on July 13, 2024

As many as 140 million customers of HDFC Bank and Axis Bank are expected to face interruption in banking services in the weekend due to the former’s system upgrade and the transition of Citi India business to the latter. Both the banks have notified their customers about the interruption in services.

HDFC Bank — the country’s largest private sector lender with 93.2 million customers — had announced that it will undertake a system upgrade on July 13, wherein it will migrate its core banking system (CBS) to a new engineered platform to enhance customer experience.

According to the bank, during the 13.5-hour upgrade, HDFC Bank customers will be able to use their debit cards and credit cards on swipe machines and for online transactions, but for a restricted amount. They can also withdraw a restricted amount of cash from any ATM using their debit cards.

UPI services will be unavailable to customers from 3 am to 3.45 am, and from 9.30 am to 12.45 pm on July 13, 2024. Further, merchants will continue to receive payments via cards, but updates to the account for previous day’s payments will be available post-upgrade, the bank said.

Axis Bank, the third largest private sector lender, which has 48 million customers, notified that certain services on the bank’s platform will be unavailable from 10 pm on July 12 to 9 am on July 14. Services on the Axis Bank internet banking and mobile banking app, fund transfers from Axis Bank accounts through NEFT, RTGS and IMPS, credit card transactions, mutual fund subscriptions, and loan services will be temporarily unavailable during July 13 and July 14.

The bank completed acquisition of Citi India’s retail business on March 1, 2023 and had then said that the integration will be completed in 18 months.