HDFC Bank's senior executive vice president and head of digital banking, Nitin Chugh, sat down with MediaNama and spoke to us at length about the bank's new wallet and digital initiatives. Chugh also spoke to us about how the bank's staff used face-to-face conversations with customers and push the adoption for mobile banking. As of January, Chugh says the volume of mobile banking transactions has increased to Rs 4,900 crore as a result of this. Answers have been edited for brevity. Part one of the interview: MediaNama: What is HDFC Bank's strategy for wallets and when are you looking to bring out a wallet as a product for customers? Nitin Chugh: From a strategy point of view, a wallet will bring about more convenience. The very simplistic way to look at it is if you go to an ecommerce site typically you need about 10-11 clicks to complete a transaction. We are trying to see if it can be done through two clicks or three at the most. That's where a wallet comes in as a high convenience platform. In addition. it will have discounts and offers embedded in it. Purely from our customers' point of view, because we're already the largest in issuance and acquiring in ecommerce transactions, this will be a significant value-add. We're probably launching the wallet in a month's time. MediaNama: You've also brought out a new application called Chillr to facilitate peer-to-peer payments. How has the traction been for that? What can we expect in the coming…
