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October - 2014 - issue > CXO View Point

Walk in with Documents, Walk out with a Credit Card!

By Mokam Singh Matta, AVP and Head of Card Solutions, CMS Info Systems
Sunday, December 7, 2014
By Mokam Singh Matta, AVP and Head of Card Solutions, CMS Info Systems
CMS Info Systems is a cash management services company in India and the leader in each of its related businesses including Managed IT Services, Card Personalisation, Print & Digital Solutions and the CMS Institute.

Banking services in India is going through a paradigm shift following customer expectations that are blurring the lines between different service categories. Where earlier financial services were expected to deliver on security and reliability, even at the cost of time and convenience, it is now all about instant and convenient, (without of course compromising security). Banks have been looking increasingly to create differentiators that have tangible value to their customers. What started with anytime money, longer banking hours, instant or pre-approved loans to instant account openings, has now become a continuous cycle of service innovations with banks looking at every potential customer experience points where they can plug this crucial element in their service delivery.

An important segment that grows stronger every year is the card base of banks. According to RBI data, there are about 19.23 million credit cards in the country as on April 2014. Card usage itself is also growing with the amount of credit card transaction at POS (Point Of Sale) was estimated at Rs.14,577 crore when compared to Rs.12,418 crore a year ago.

At the top of the pyramid of card users, one finds consumers with multiple credit cards. The battle for these wallets has clearly moved on to value additions and superior service. The power of plastic money that promotes 'buy instantly and pay at leisure' extends naturally over time to instant acquisition of that power. So far there has been no getting around a process that takes upwards of two weeks, and one has to wait, be it for fresh issuance or replacement of lost cards.

This is changing, and we have some interesting technology behind this. Banks and financial institutions issuing credit cards have partnered with banking technology companies to develop a new instant issuance system. The system reduces the time taken in issuing a card from two-three weeks to merely an hour. The process includes documentation, verification, credit check and personalization with specific individualised details encrypted and embedded into the latest EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) chip standard cards. For banks that support personalized images on credit cards, a customer can upload an image to the Internet, then walk into the bank and have the card printed the same day.


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