HDFC Bank has appointed Backbase to help them deliver their vision for a market-leading digital banking experience in India. Backbase powers HDFC Bank’s retail banking, allowing for a more seamless customer experience across digital touchpoints in response to changing consumer expectations and new regulatory requirements, as the press release says.

HDFC Bank is one of India’s well-known private sector banks, providing products and smart banking solutions to over 70 million customers across the country. A Backbase customer since 2016, HDFC Bank has renewed its agreement in line with its technical design principles of security, horizontal scalability, and remaining cloud agnostic. Backbase has helped 150+ banks and credit unions around the globe re-architect banking around their customers.

They say they did that while being built as one unified platform to engage and orchestrate frictionless experiences across all touchpoints at every stage of the customer lifecycle across retail banking, business banking, digital lending, and wealth management. What prompted the move? HDFC Bank representatives observed that Indian consumers expect digital banking to match the seamless experience of their favourite ecommerce and social media platforms. In addition to savvy UI, from savings to loans to payments and beyond, customers want to effortlessly complete transactions, easily and quickly, anytime, and anywhere.

With this in mind, the bank chose Backbase’s banking platform to help them develop their new services faster. The bank’s customer-first internet banking architecture will be run and managed on the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform. The digital banking platform meets Indian money transfer regulations, via integrations with Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), and UPI Payments, and encompasses configurable local security features on par with local industry standards.

Backbase provides local engineering, implementation, and customer support, for banks in India, including HDFC Bank, through its Asia Customer Success hub and Hyderabad Backbase Development Center (BDC), allowing financial institutions to focus on delivering hyper-personalized experiences and support as well as generating new revenue streams. In addition, for banks with hybrid or pure cloud implementation, Backbase provides local support via their data centres within Mumbai and Hyderabad. HDFC Bank diversifying its activities Alongside its collaboration with Backbase, HDFC Bank also partnered with Flipkart Wholesale, the B2B marketplace of Flipkart to launch a co-branded credit card for Kirana members and small merchants.

Only available for Flipkart Wholesale members, the credit card will run on the Diners Club International network, part of the Discover Global Network, and can be used in 200+ countries globally wherever Diners Club cards are accepted. Looking to further strengthen its portfolio of activities, the bank will be taking part in testing in-store payments using the retail version of the digital rupee. While the first part of India’s digital rupee adventure involved the ICICI, IDFC First, and Kotak Mahindra banks, HDFC Bank is set to get involved in the second phase of the project.

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