Bandhan Bank has partnered Standard Chartered Bank to foray into the credit card segment.

While the city-based private bank will offer a base of 40 lakh non-microfinance customers, Standard Chartered will offer credit and the back-end support for the co-branded card holders.

“There are lots of work at the back-end. Through this partnership, it will be easy and quick to provide the service to our bank account holders. They (Standard Chartered) have good experience in the international and Indian market. We are only four years old and we don’t have that much experience here. So, we have gone for the collaboration,” Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, managing director and CEO of Bandhan Bank, said on the occasion of the foundation day of the bank.

He added that credit card was an essential segment for the microfinance firm-turned-lender to retain non microfinance customers who despite having accounts with the bank depend on the credit card services of other banks.

“The credit call will be taken by us, but clearly the customers will be that of Bandhan. This is a first such partnership for us with a bank. The idea is to cover as many customers of Bandhan who fit our credit filters and certainly the idea is to scale it up further,” said Zarin Daruwala, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank, India.

Standard Chartered currently has a base of 1.2 million credit cards out of 49 million cards issued in the country.

There will be three variants of the credit card catering to the mass market, the affluent and the premium segment. Bandhan Bank has 1.74 customers, including microfinance and non-microfinance clients.