Infinity Standard Chartered Card: The Smart way to charge

MANILA, Philippines - It’s the coming together of two giants in telecom and banking. Standard Chartered Bank (Standard Chartered) and Smart Infinity have partnered up for the bank’s first platinum credit card: The Infinity Standard Chartered Platinum MasterCard, launched last June 29.

Smart’s Infinity program is tailored for its top-end cell-phone subscribers — people whose monthly service fee is greater than P5,000 . Standard Chartered’s priority banking clientele is composed of people with a minimum deposit of at least P2.5 million. This is the segment of society that both companies cater to and it makes perfect sense to address the clients’ telecom and financial needs in one go.

There is also one similarity for this market segment: The customers’ accounts are managed by a dedicated relationship manager.

“Infinity subscribers are the most premium customers of Smart and they’re treated as we treat our priority banking clients,” says Supratim Pandey, Standard Chartered Bank general manager for Lending and Transaction Banking. He adds that Infinity subscribers are pre-qualified to own the Infinity Standard Chartered Platinum MasterCard.

Pandey relates that when the co-brand card was being designed, they talked to customers about what they wanted in a credit card.

“We found out that they wanted three things,” he says. “The first is real, substantial and transparent rewards — not gimmicks where you earn a million points and get nothing significant. They didn’t want us to confuse them with complicated redemption.”

What would be a “real” reward? It’s getting cash back, that’s what. The card offers a five percent cash rebate on all dining charges anytime, anywhere, here or abroad. There is no minimum purchase requirement. Anytime you use your card in any restaurant or café worldwide, you get the five percent cash rebate. Even if the restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall in Kazakhstan? “Yes,” says Pandey. “For as long as they accept MasterCard, you get the cash rebate of 5% in the form of cash rewards.”

When it comes to generous rewards, Standard Chartered Bank is hard to beat. It recently held a two-month promo that offered 20 percent off on all dining charges in the form of cash rebates.

Another real, no-gimmick reward is that cardholders get a five percent cash rebate on their Infinity subscription bill, which tends to be high for customers especially when they’re on roaming, when they put it on auto-charge on their Infinity Standard Chartered Platinum MasterCard.

The second thing that customers are looking for is financial solutions. “Infinity subscribers are Smart’s top-end postpaid customers, a very select, exclusive group. So they go for benefits beyond what their telecom company might provide, and one of them is financial services. That’s where we come in,” says Pandey. “We have the priority banking proposition for our top customers with a minimum deposit of P2.5 million. For Infinity customers, we have pre-approved them for priority banking, which gives them access to our priority banking services and perks. For instance, you get your own relationship manager (RM) who will help you manage your wealth and guide you in your financial decisions; if you go to any of our branches, you have an exclusive area for priority-banking clients.”

And the third thing customers are looking for in their credit card is waived annual fee, which Standard Chartered has done for Infinity Standard Chartered cardholders — for life! No need to charge up to a certain amount to avail of this. “These are customers that are used to certain exclusivity. We’re taking major efforts in tapping the top-end of the market, the majority of whom are businessmen and entrepreneurs, owners of SMEs, and a lot of senior executives.”

The co-branding between Standard Chartered and Smart Infinity is a smart move for both companies. Pandey says, “Between Standard Chartered Bank and Infinity, we have a lot of common customers. Infinity customers will soon become the Bank’s customers — our goal is 100 percent penetration, but realistically we’re looking at 70 percent of Infinity subscribers to become Standard Chartered customers. With this card, their relationship with Infinity is enriched by a banking relationship. It makes logical sense that we waive the annual fee because we’re building a relationship beyond the card.”

Standard Chartered Bank is no stranger to using telecommunication to enhance its services. Last year it launched a service called SMS Alert for all cardholders. Every time you use your card, you get a text alert indicating which card was used and the exact amount charged — for any amount and anywhere you use it. Before your due date, you also get a reminder alert and another one after you make a payment informing you that it has been successfully credited.

The alert goes to the principal cardholder’s mobile phone, not the supplementary cardholder even if he or she was the one who made the charge. “By right, you have to send it to the principal cardholder who is paying the bill’” says Pandey with a laugh. “A few times we got calls from the principal cardholder who said someone was using his card. So we checked and said, ‘Sir, it’s your supplementary card.’

The SMS alert comes in real time, which means that if you lose your card, you’ll know in a few seconds if somebody is using it. “What’s more important is that you have peace of mind. Imagine, if you lose your card and not find out till many hours later and somebody has already used it.”

Standard Chartered Bank also uses mobile phone technology in its Internet banking. Pandey says, to the best of his knowledge, Standard Chartered is the only bank in the Philippines that has an SMS-based, two-factor authentication. “You go to our website and enter your name and PIN. Most of the banks offer only that. With us, a second pin — a one-time PIN that’s different each time you log on — is sent as a text to your mobile phone. So even if somebody else knows your log-in ID and password, they really can’t do anything with it because they have to have your mobile phone. If you lose your phone, you just have to call it in and we block the number in our system. With this two-factor authentication, you don’t lose control of your account. Infinity Standard Chartered cardholders will benefit from this as well.”

Pandey adds, “The way banks compete today is very good for the customer. Like any industry, you have to become more innovative to be the customer choice. What you did a year ago is not enough to succeed today. You have to be coming up with innovative, value-added new services all the time.”

For the country’s first and oldest foreign bank, which has proven it is here in the Philippines for the long run, Standard Chartered certainly knows how to harness present technology for the future.