Household HSBC Watch

Is India processing your credit card payments? Most likely they are since they are doing work for the three largest credit card companies. Will HSBC Finance Corporation outsource their jobs and new Metris jobs to India? Time will tell, but wages are one-fifth of U.S. wages.

Nilesh Kothari, chief operating officer of Hero ITES, said of security measures, “Our clients are three of the world’s largest credit card companies and we have always followed strict norms. Although we’ve had no untoward incident, we are telling employees to be even more vigilant than before - but without putting extra pressure on them. And people have been very responsive.”

For the companies, a lot is at stake. The $5.7 billion outsourcing industry is growing at around 40 percent a year. More than 350,000 young Indians work in call centers for a fifth of western wages. India is far ahead of other countries that also perform back office and call center work for Western companies, but it knows the lead could erode fast.