by NR INDRAN

HDFC Bank, a leading private sector banks in the country, on Tuesday launched a service for its customers whereby they can pay their income tax through an ATM. The service was flagged off by Mr. C R Sundaramurti, Controller General of Accounts, Union Ministry of Finance, at the Bank’s Deer Park branch in New Delhi.

With this facility, the Bank has given its vast customer base the freedom from waiting in long queues at counters or logging into the internet to pay their taxes. The service can now be accessed by the Bank’s 115 lakh debit card holders at 5998 HDFC Bank ATMs in 1111 cities across the country. All they need to do is to register with the Bank for this service and the ATM payment option will be activated immediately. After the registration, a customer can visit an HDFC Bank ATM and complete his transaction in a few easy steps. An account holder can register at least two PANs against a single debit card.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Rajender Sehgal, Group Head, Government Business Group, HDFC Bank, spoke about the long relationship the Bank has enjoyed with the CGA office since 2001 when the latter had reposed faith in HDFC Bank by nominating it as the first non-public sector bank to collect direct taxes on behalf of the Government. “The Bank has continuously added value to the taxpayer by initiating doorstep service of collection of challans and providing technology-enabled world class service platform through netbanking. This has enabled the Bank to emerge as the second-largest collector of direct taxes pan India,” he said.

Mr Sundaramurti said: “HDFC Bank has lived up to the Government’s expectation of the Government towards the collection of both direct and indirect taxes. The Government, therefore, has reposed confidence in HDFC Bank by mandating it to launch payment of taxes through its ATMs.”

The event was also attended by Mr. Jawahar Thakur, PR, CCA, CBDT and Mr. S M Kumar, Additional CGA and other Income Tax officials.

The bank’s competitive strength clearly lies in the use of technology and the ability to deliver world-class service with rapid response time. Over the last 16 years, the bank has successfully gained market share in its target customer franchises while maintaining healthy profitability and asset quality.

As of June 30, 2011, the Bank had a distribution network with 2,111 branches and 5,998 ATMs in 1,111 cities.

For the quarter ended June 30, 2011, the Bank’s total income was INR 70.98 billion (`7,098.0 crore) as against INR 54.11 billion (`5,411.0 crore) for the quarter ended June 30, 2010. Net revenues (net interest income plus other income) were INR 39.68 billion (`3,968.0 crore) for the quarter ended June 30, 2011, as against INR 33.92 billion (`3,392.0 crore) for the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Net Profit for the quarter ended June 30, 2011 was INR 10.85 billion (`1,085.0 crore), up by 33.7% over the corresponding quarter ended June 30, 2010.

The Bank’s total balance sheet size increased by 22.6% to INR 2859.42 billion (`285,942 crore) as of June 30, 2011. Total deposits were INR 2111.51 billion (`211,151 crore) as of June 30, 2011.

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