In a departure from the regular approach toward card-unit acquisitions in India, Standard Chartered Bank India Pvt. Ltd. plans to buy just half of Barclays Bank India Pvt. Ltd.’s beleaguered card portfolio.
Mumbai-based Standard Chartered Bank was one of two banks that expressed interest in buying the British bank’s India subsidiary’s card business, the other being State Bank of India Ltd. (
Barclays in April said it planned to review its credit card business in India after deciding to focus instead on secured retail assets, but it has struggled to find a buyer (
A source within Barclays now tells PaymentsSource that Standard Chartered has agreed to buy 150,000 of the 300,000 cardholders Barclays has in its India portfolio. Local media reports, however, put the total at 170,000 accounts.
“What I can confirm is that this is only the purchase of cardmembers and not any other assets such as staff or real estate,” the Barclays source says. “The cardholders that are being transferred would be intimated over the next two months.”
Though he could not disclose the value of the sale, local media reports said the deal closed at a discounted 2 billion rupees (US$39 million or 29 million euros). However, PaymentsSource could not secure confirmation that the deal had closed.
“The bank has cherry-picked the cardholders it wanted from Barclays to mirror its own healthy cardmember base,” the source tells PaymentsSource. “All these cardholders have been around for four years, and I am told that they maintain good credit records.”
Standard Chartered would have 1.27 million credit cardholders 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.
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