Mumbai, Aug 23 (IANS) India's largest credit card issuer HDFC Bank on Monday said it aims to add five lakh new credit cards to its portfolio every month beginning February 2022.

Accordingly, the new additions will enable the bank to regain market share in the credit card issuing business in the next 9 to 12 months.

The bank's new target comes after the Reserve Bank relaxed the restrictions on HDFC Bank and allowed the lender to issue new credit cards.

However, the restrictions on all new launches of the digital business generating activities planned under 'Digital 2.0' will continue till further review by RBI.

In December 2020, RBI directed asked HDFC Bank to temporarily stop all launches of the 'Digital Business generating activities and sourcing of new credit card customers on certain incidents of outages in the Internet banking, mobile banking and payment utilities of the bank over the past two years.

According to HDFC Bank, it has over 20 initiatives which will hit the market in the next 6 to 9 months to drive this growth.

These initiatives, the bank pointed out includes the launch of new co-branded cards with the who's who of Corporate India spanning pharma, travel, FMCG, hospitality, telecom and fintech.

"The last few months have been spent in readying ourselves for the future. When the restrictions from the regulator were in place, we utilised the time to chalk out a new strategy," said Parag Rao, Group Head - Payments, Consumer Finance, Digital Banking & IT, HDFC Bank.

"With our new offerings as well as our existing suite of cards, we are confident of meeting the needs of our customers and 'come back with a bang'."

At present, HDFC Bank has about 3.67 crore debit cards, 1.48 crore credit cards and about 21.34 lakh acceptance points.