The RBI stopped HDFC Bank from signing up new credit card customers over outages

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HDFC Bank. By its own account, India's largest credit card issuer. Then the regulator tells it to stop signing up new card customers. The reason? Outages.

Over two years, outages hit its internet banking, mobile banking and payments. 21 November 2020. Power fails in its primary data centre. Eleven days later, the Reserve Bank of India issues an order.

That day, internet banking goes down. The payment system too. The villain? One power failure. In the primary data centre.

But here's the twist. The order freezes what's new. Stop sourcing new credit card customers. Stop launches under its Digital 2 point 0 programme. And the Board must examine the lapses and fix accountability.

So the bank moves its core data centres to new facilities. Now it can switch over in under 45 minutes. UPI capacity tripled. Net and mobile banking doubled, to 90 thousand users at once.

August 2021. After a third-party audit, the restrictions are partly lifted. March 2022. The Digital 2 point 0 embargo is fully removed. About 15 months after the order.

Every data centre loses power one day. Build the failover. Size it. Drill it until switching is boring.

Full story in the article.