To promote the Digital India initiative of the Modi government and hence give a fillip to cashless transactions or boost digital payments, HDFC Bank and IOC have come together to offer a special fuel credit card. The co-branded fuel card will award users with reward points termed as fuel points on their spend on fuel. At the same time, for another spend on grocery, bill payment etc. they will also be rewarded with fuel points.

And these points can be redeemed for up to 50 litres of petrol and diesel in a year.
The co-branded card will be available on both of the Rupay and VISA interface.
On the launch, Vigyan Kumar said that Indian Oil spearheaded digital India mission and almost 98% of its pan India outlets are technically competent to receive payments via digital mode.

"More than 27% of all transactions at our petrol stations are through various digital modes. We are confident that this collaboration with HDFC Bank today shall give a boost to digital payments and cashless transactions in the country, in line with the Digital India vision of the prime minister," he said.

Our philosophy in terms of offering products across HDFC Bank is very simple. We try to see the primary top two needs of an individual and try to design a product which is focused on these needs of the customer."

"Also, one of our and IOC's objectives in launching this card is to assist in this whole digital mission of saying how do you reduce cash. We have a lot of other initiatives with IOC in terms of digitisation.

"Simultaneously, as a bank, we are also expanding our merchant network everywhere so that a merchant in the rural area, either through a POS (a point of sale machine, which is an electronic device used to process card payments) machine or an app, we have a merchant app, could start accepting digital payments, which could be a card, other wallets etc".

"In India, the penetration of electronic spends at customer level, I am not talking of institutions and businesses, is only about 10-12%, rest is still cash and cheque, so we have got a lot of space to grow...," said Rao the man behind the launch of HDFC-IOC co-branded fuel card.

Other features of the card

The credit card comes exclusively for non-metro users

Annual charges will be of Rs. 500. The waiver on the annual fees will be given if in a year the cardholder spends Rs. 50,000 using the card.

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