RuPay: India’s Card Payment Network
RuPay: India’s Card Payment Network
India’s President Pranab Mukherjee recently dedicated India’s very own card payment network called RuPay to the nation. The RuPay card is accepted at all ATMS in India. It is also accepted by 9.45 lakh plus PoS (point of sale) terminals in India. Most of the eCom merchants in the country adding up to 10,000 are now accepting RuPay cards as well, according to official sources.
A variant of this card called the Kisan Card is also being issued by public sector banks. This is in addition to the mainstream debit card issued by around 43 banks in India.
A variant of this pre-paid RuPay card will soon be launched by the IRCTC as well. Nearly 150 cooperative banks and regional rural banks will also be issued the RuPay ATM card. The total number of cards issued till date is 17 million. The numbers are growing by about 3 million per month. Rupay is a new card payment scheme. It has been coined keeping the two terms Rupee and Payment in mind.
This card is an epitome of the capabilities of the banking industry. It focuses on building a card payment network so that the dependence on the international card schemes lessens. RuPay is being developed by the National Payments Corporation of India which is a not for profit company put into action by the RBI. It has been created by the banking industry.
RuPay is a domestic card scheme which has been developed and launched by the NPCI. It is created to fulfil the demand of the RBI to create an open and multilateral system of payments in India. RuPay facilitates the payment through electronic means at all the Indian banks and financial institutions. It is in direct competition with companies such as Visa and MasterCard in India. The RuPay card will gain international acceptance through NPCI’s ties with Discover Financial.
Currently, the Indian market has huge potential for card schemes such as this. Indian merchants, traders, consumers and banks will benefit tremendously from this card scheme. Some of the advantages of RuPay debit cards are the high levels of acceptance and a flexible product platform.
Lower cost and affordability of the card is another major positive factor that will help it to become one of the top ways for a transaction in India. As transaction processing is within domestic shores, it has led to lower cost of clearing and ease of settlement for all the transactions. The card will become popular within the industry because of its low cost of usage.
Customized product offering is another important advantage of the RuPay card scheme. This is a domestic scheme which is concerned with the development of customized products and services for consumers in India. The information pertaining to Indian consumers is also protected through this method. All the customer and transaction data pertaining to RuPay will remain in India.
Another major benefit of RuPay is that it will provide electronic product options for those consumer segments which are currently unexplored. The consumer segments in rural areas, for instance are really untapped. Rural consumers do not have access to banking and financial services. The reasonable pricing of RuPay cards is another positive factor which will enhance its appeal in the rural parts of India. RuPay also has another immense benefit. It is able to provide complete inter-operability between various payment products as well as gateways. The NPCI provides complete solutions across ATMs, mobile devices, cheques and other such platforms.
The IndiaPay scheme was conceived by the National Payments Corporation of India to consolidate various payment systems in the country. It was changed to RuPay to avoid confusion with other financial schemes and products of the same name. RuPay was launched on 26 March in the year 2012. RuPay is all set to revolutionize card payment in India.
