The Reserve Bank of India has asked HDFC Bank to temporarily halt all launches of its digital business generating activities under 'Digital 2.0', along with sourcing new credit card customers.

RBI has also directed HDFC Bank's board to examine these lapses and fix accountability. The restrictions shall be considered for lifting based on "satisfactory compliance with the major critical observations", the order further stated.

The order, dated 2 December, comes after the private sector lender suffered its third big outage within two years. On 21 November, HDFC Bank's internet banking and payment system were disrupted by a fresh outage, the first since Shashidhar Jagadeeshan took over as the new CEO after the retirement of Aditya Puri in October.

HDFC Bank's latest digital services outage was due to a power failure at the lenders data center.

HDFC Bank said on Thursday that it has, over the last two years, "taken several measures to fortify its IT systems and will continue to work swiftly to close out the balance and would continue to engage with the regulator in this regard".

In a regulatory filing, HDFC Bank further stated: "The bank has always endeavoured to provide seamless digital banking services to its customers. The bank has been taking conscious, concrete steps to remedy the recent outages on its digital banking channels and assures its customers that it expects the current supervisory actions will have no impact on its existing credit cards, digital banking channels and existing operations."

Customers were affected by the recent outage as the bank's ATMs, cards, net banking, and even its UPI channels were not functioning normally.

In December last year, customers complained that they were unable to pay their loan EMIs or settle credit card bills on time. The central bank had sent a team to HDFC Bank to examine the outage. "We have checked it up and it has been restored fully. Our team has gone to identify the reasons and find out what we can give them as a direction," RBI deputy governor MK Jain had then said.

In January last year, Jagdishan, the then executive director, had clarified that the outage was not due to any cyberattack but had originated because the bank 'underestimated' growth in payment volumes. The disruption was more of a capacity issue, he had stated.