Kotak to focus on value for credit card business than volume; target is affluent segment, says CFO, ETCFO

Private lender Kotak Mahindra Bank on Saturday said that the strategy around regaining credit card market share is targeting value over volume.

“Our strategy is to target value over number towards regaining the lost market share after the RBI imposed embargo on its credit card business,” Devang Gheewalla told ETBFSI at the post Q4 earnings press conference.

“The product offerings growing forward shall target the affluent markets. Kotak Solitaire, launched in March 2025 is one such example of product offering,” Gheewalla added.

The Reserve Bank of India on April 24, 2024 restrained the bank from onboarding new customers through its online and mobile banking channels, and issuing fresh credit cards. The tech embargo has been uplifted by the banking regulator on February 12, 2025.

Kotak Mahindra Bank’s credit card market share stood at 6 per cent before the RBI embargo was imposed, the current market share has trickled down to 4 per cent after a 10-month long duration of not issuing fresh credit card.

As per the data released by RBI, Kotak’ year-on-year growth was registered at (-)19 per cent for March 2025.

Ashok Vawani, MD & CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank reflecting on the bank’s recovery journey post-embargo, said, “We used that time under the technology embargo to really strengthen our digital offerings..when we come out of the technology embargo we’ll come out much, much stronger.” He pointed to the “strong new mobile banking app that we’ve launched for our affluent customers” as one example.

Ashok Vaswani also said, “Over-leveraging of urban customers, which became evident in our credit card and personal loan portfolios around the middle of last year. While the personal loan segment has since stabilised, credit card delinquencies remain somewhat elevated, though we expect them to start trending down.

Kotak is currently issuing around 1.3–1.4 lakh cards per month, and the card book has crossed Rs 9,000 crore.

Credit card spending fell by nearly 9% month-on-month in February 2025 to Rs 1.6 trillion, marking the lowest level since July 2024.

• Published On May 5, 2025 at 08:42 AM IST

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