Indonesia's Bank Permata offers supermarket credit card

Bank Permata introduced a co-branded credit card with Hero Supermarket, which provides shopping benefits to holders of the card.

“Grocery customers have shopping routines. This potential market segment is what we are eyeing,” said Lauren Sulistiawati, retail banking director at Permata.

The bank, according to Sulistiawati, was confident the cooperation would help boost credit card loans to consumers, because the Hero Group has 573 outlets across the country including Giant hypermarket stores and Guardian pharmaceutical outlets.

Lauren said that as of the end of September the lender had issued 500,000 credit cards and expected the number to grow to 700,000 by the end of the year.

Holders of a “PermataHERO” credit card, which has no annual fee, will enjoy a 5 percent discount for branded products from Hero, Giant and Guardian. Customers will also receive a 3.5 percent “cash back” when they shop at these three stores.