India’s HDFC Bank, B2B Marketplace Retailio Team on Branded Credit Cards

HDFC Bank, the biggest private sector bank in India, has partnered with Retailio, the Indian B2B pharma marketplace, to roll out co-branded credit cards targeted at pharmacies in the merchant segment, a report from Livemint said Monday (May 23).

HDFC said this is likely to cover over 140,000 merchants in its first phase and will be available to over 100,000 customers of Retailio from their existing merchant base.

There will be several new features, such as 50 days of interest-free credit, reward points, various milestone benefits, 5% cashback on essentials like utility, telecom, government and tax payments, and no- or low-cost EMI options for customers on their credit cards, along with term loan eligibility.

Parag Rao, country head of payment business, consumer finance, technology and digital banking with HDFC, said the partnership will “extend this collaboration further into the pharma sector with a customized product for retail pharmacies, distributors, and hospitals within the Retailio merchant network.”

“Our objective is to help enlarge the ecosystem through such collaborations, and ultimately offer a differentiated, tailor-made experience for customers to meet their evolving needs,” he said, according to the report.

See also: Paytm, HDFC Bank Partner To Provide Consumer, Merchant Solutions

HDFC partnered last year with Paytm, the FinTech platform, to debut new financial solutions for Indian customers and merchants to help boost digital transactions for semi-urban and rural parts of India.

The deal was made as Paytm was readying for its IPO and it came with new products for digital payments, lending and point of sale (POS) solutions, the report said.

That will include services like payment gateways, POS machines and credit products like buy now pay later (BNPL) solutions.

Paytm and HDFC will also roll out a co-branded retail POS product.

Paytm Lending CEO Bhavesh Gupta said the aim was to provide digital lending and payment solutions.

“This partnership will strengthen the financial services ecosystem by bringing together our technology and digital solutions and HDFC Bank’s retail and credit prowess,” he said, according to the release.