Irked by outages, RBI asks HDFC Bank to halt fresh digital launches for now

RBI measures won't affect existing customers. Similar measures could be taken for larger banks that faced recent outages

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday morning directed the country’s largest private sector lender, HDFC Bank, to temporarily halt all its digital launches as well as new sourcing of credit card customers, following various outages the bank faced due to technical glitches in the past two years. 

“The RBI has advised the bank to stop i) all launches of the digital business generating activities planned under its programme ‐ Digital 2.0 (to be launched) and other proposed business generating IT applications and (ii) sourcing of new credit card customers. In addition, the order states that the bank’s board