With a view to further drive digital payment adoption among the merchant segment, HDFC Bank has launched cashback/prizes for small and medium-sized merchants across metro, semi-urban and rural markets.
The campaign, called ‘Tees pe Treat’, for merchants, began in October will cover the entire festive season till the end of the year.
This campaign will cover more than 7 lakh traders and merchants who are part of HDFC Bank network across India.
So merchants using the Bank’s Merchant App, QR code, PoS or Payment gateways and across all segments like – Electronics, Apparel, Grocery, Fuel etc, stand to win assured cashback and prizes on volume build-up, EMI or Digital transactions.
“This is a first for the Bank, where we are extending the festive treats campaign for even the entire small and medium merchants in our network across the country. This programme is not just for merchants based in metros, but also in semi-urban and rural markets,” said Parag Rao, Country Head – Payments, Consumer Finance, Marketing and Digital Banking at HDFC Bank.
He added that to further deepen the adoption of various digital payment forms across India, it is important that the merchant network is empowered with the best solution range and are also encouraged and incentivised for this change in behaviour, as this change is a critical step towards Digital India.
“The small and medium merchants form a critical backbone of our merchant network. If merchants are enthused about using digital payment forms, it will give a further push to the usage of electronic payments by customers,” he said.
The largest private sector lender is a leading player in the merchant acquiring space in the country and as per recent media reports has set an aggressive target of increasing its network of small merchants to 20 million in the next three years.
The bank is targeting merchants with solutions on accepting payments, providing value-added services like creating a simple website for them, taking care of their inventory and lending based on cash flows.
HDFC Bank processes 48% of the overall volumes through cards and about a fourth of the UPI volumes happening at the merchants.
HDFC Bank has a volume share of 49% in the Top 8 cities, over 65% in the top 100 merchants of the country and a dominant share in key segments like Ecom, Fuel, Healthcare, Apparels, Jewellery, Electronics & Telecom.
“The small and medium-sized merchant network is the railroads on which we will further drive the adoption of digital payments across the length and breadth of the country,” said Parag.
He added that the incentive to merchants will be based on growth in overall volume, driving EMI to consumers on Credit & Debit card and encouraging digital transactions through like UPI. BQR, SMS Pay.
The offer is a combination of assured cashback and gifts on merchants either achieving 30% growth on EMI and overall acquiring volume processed through HDFC Bank solutions or by doing minimum 30 digital transactions on SmartHub merchant app.
On digital transactions, retail app merchants will have to do a minimum of 30 transactions to qualify for the cashback and can earn an assured cashback of up to Rs 1500 in the Festive season.
Apart from this, there are iPhones to be won every week and Gift hampers for merchants for the entire festive period till December.
The Bank recently launched Festive Treats 2.0 campaign, where customers can avail of special deals on banking products and over 1000 offers from leading brands in India.
Further, the campaign also has over 2000 hyper-local offers through tie-ups with local merchants across semi-urban and rural markets in India.