Kotak Mahindra Bank open to more partnerships on co-branded credit cards, says senior executive

In the past few months, Kotak Bank has partnered with BookMyShow (BMS) to offer special discounts on tickets for international artists

Kotak Mahindra Bank is in talks with some industry players to launch more co-branded credit cards, said Frederick D’Souza, Business Head, Credit Cards, Kotak Mahindra Bank, on March 26 in an exclusive interaction with Moneycontrol.

“It is very clear that the co-branded partners we have are the co-brand partners of banks. We have no problems on this front. For us, it is a clear equal partnership with all of our co-brand partners. We are always in conversation with more partners. We are also interested in customer opportunities where the payment flows are large,” said D’Souza.

Currently, the bank has five co-branded credit cards -- with IndiGo Airlines, PVR, Indian Oil Corporation, Myntra and Metro Cash and Carry.

Also read: Banks struggle to attract deposits as customers chase high return equity-linked products

Event-based credit cards

In the past few months, Kotak Bank has partnered with BookMyShow (BMS) to offer special discounts on tickets for international artists. Some of the artists include Ed Sheeran, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, Trevor Noah, etc.
D’Souza said that the bank has seen good growth in credit card spending through these events.

“Our celebrity credit card offers have shown us around 5x growth in total spends and customer numbers. And we will continue to partner with BMS for artist events,” he said.

Credit card industry

Credit card spending stood at Rs 2.5 lakh crore in January 2024, latest sectoral credit data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed. As of December 2023, Kotak Bank’s credit card portfolio stood at Rs 13,882 crore, growing by a robust 52 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis.

There has been a growth in this spending after the introduction of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on credit cards. In June 2022, RBI allowed individuals to link their credit cards to UPI.

However, this is possible only through select banks that have linked their RuPay credit cards to UPI. On May 31, BoB Financial Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of Baroda (BoB), announced that BoB credit card customers can now use RuPay Credit Cards on UPI-enabled apps, such as BHIM, PhonePe, Paytm, Google Pay, Slice, MobiKwik and PayZapp.

Similarly, in June 2023, Canara Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank introduced the facility of UPI payments to merchants through RuPay credit cards issued by them.

Some of the other banks that have linked RuPay credit cards and UPI are Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, Indian Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India and YES Bank

D’Souza said that Kotak Bank has focused on boosting the RuPay credit cards business, which has been working well for them. “We have a good RuPay credit card business. We have also seen good business among other card networks,” he said.