This offering from HDFC Bank comes as the debit card base in India is increasing at a frenzied pace.

The gold debit card offering also provides accidental death insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh, fire and burglary cover of Rs 50,000 for items purchased through the card and loss of baggage insurance of Rs 20,000.

The card also offers special discounts and packages on facilities such as hotel stay, eating out and car rental.

HDFC Bank account holders will have to pay an annual fee of Rs 500 to avail of this new card. The debit card base in India now is almost double that of credit cards.

The total debit cards had increased 146 per cent to 20.63 million in March 2004 from 8.38 million in March 2003. HDFC's share in the debit cards base was 10 per cent in March 2004.

Neeraj Swaroop, head-retail banking at HDFC Bank, said the new international gold debit card is part of the bank's efforts to create new benchmarks. The international gold card has been launched in association with Visa.

Uttam Nayak, deputy country manager of Visa International, said the card has matured from a vanilla product to being customised to suit the needs of the card holders.

The HDFC Bank gold international debit card has been created to handle travel needs of cardholders.

The single-largest player in the public sector responsible for the increase in debit cards is State Bank of India, which started issuing debit cards at the start of 2003 and now has a base of over 5.5 million.

ICICI Bank is the largest issuer of debit cards at over 6 million.

The debit card base is expected to continue to rise sharply as all ATM cards get converted into debit cards and all banks start giving debit cards to their savings account holders.