Future Credit looking beyond Group Companies

Kishore Biyani promoted, Future Capital Holdings Ltd which went public at an astounding premium has set its eyes on Telecom, Airlines and other Utility companies to tap in more customers. It is well known to our readers that Future Capital migrated around 1 million ICICI-Bank Biz Bazaar and other Pantaloon group company customers to Future Capital. Now Future Capital wants to expand loyalty membership cards to service oriented companies.

Mr. Ventak Srinivas of Future Capital said,

There are bunch of Telecom and airline companies which are looking at a platform and would liek to expand the consumption of their consumers. We are in discussion with Kingfisher Airlines.

It makes real sense for Future Capital to strike deals with as many companies as possible and give loyalty point to shop in any of the retail stores of Pantaloon Group.

Credit Card Fraud up 28% in India

Last August we reported about the credit card frauds in Indian Public and Private sector banks. We are in receipt of data, which suggests that Credit Card Fraud was up by 28% in India YoY according to the latest figures revealed in the parliament. The number of fraud cases in 2007 saw a dismal increase but the amount involved had shot up by 28%.

Year 2005 had 8,789 cases involving Rs 18.36 crore
Year 2006 had 17,268 cases involving Rs 30 crore
Year 2007 had 17,294 cases involving Rs 38.44 crore

ICICI Bank is the only bank in India which is sending out SMS messages for every credit card transaction [irrespective of the amount]. At last we found something good in this Bank ;-) HDFC Bank charges Rs 99 / year and sends out an SMS for every Online Transaction and every merchant Transaction over Rs 15,000 only. I have requested them to send an SMS for every transaction and lets see what happens.

Axis Bank's Credit Card on Euro-Master-Visa Standards

Axis Bank became the first bank in India to introduce credit cards in accordance with Europay, Mastercard, Visa standards that comes with an embedded chip to store the card holders details. [More details on that EMV Standards here] The chip sends a secret message to authenticate every transaction making it difficult for a fraudster to steal the information.

Axis Bank's VISA Platinum Credit Card will be issued on the above standards. It is not clear weather all debit cards and credit cards will be replaced in the future to comply with EMV card standards. By complying with the above standards, one can drastically reduce the fraud occurring by skimming and counterfeiting.

Finally after having personally written to many banks, HDFC Bank accepted our recommendations on making online authentication safer for online banking customer.

Credit Card with unsolicited Insurance under investigation

Most Banks and Financial Institutions in India, especially ICICI and its subsidiaries are involved in this malpractice of forcibly issuing an insurance policy with credit card to a consumer. The card company then debits the insurance premium account to your credit card without your consent. When the consumer disputes, the bank refuses to reverse the entry and puts the consumer into obligation of paying the amount due on his credit card and then lodge a complaint.

Several consumers raised their voice by writing to IRDA [Insurance Regulator in India] and have managed to get attention as IRDA has said,

Authority is in receipt of several complaints citing instances of policies being issued without collecting a proposal form in terms of section 4(1) or where a prposal form is not used, without confirming the information collected from proposers to them within 15 days of collecting the information either orally or in writing as required by section 4(4) of the regulation.

This is rampant with first time credit card accounts and companies have exploited consumers. We also further request IRDA to do away with all the ORAL consent mechanism as banks in India are not at all trustworthy.