Hammering the final nail in what can be called Barclays Bank’s credit card misadventure in India, Mumbai-based Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. has acquired the nonperforming card portfolio of the British bank, a source within Kotak Mahindra tell PaymentsSource tells PaymentsSource.
Kotak Mahindra acquired 150,000 card accounts in the portfolio for an undisclosed price in a deal the companies will formally announce later this week, says the source, who requested anonymity.
The cards are part of the bad debt the British bank had garnered during its Indian operations; Standard Chartered Bank India Pvt. Ltd. bought the better-performing cards in the portfolio last month (
Standard Chartered was able to cherry-pick 150,000 of the 300,000 cardholders Barclays had in its India portfolio. It now issues 1.27 million credit cards in India with the acquisition, making it the country’s fifth largest card issuer after HDFC Bank Ltd., ICICI Bank Ltd., Citibank India Pvt. Ltd. and State Bank of India.
Kotak Mahindra’s in-house asset reconstruction team will be responsible for recovering the debts from the cardholders once the deal is finalized.
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