RuPay credit card launch by December

Hyderabad: National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation promoted by banks and supported by Reserve Bank of India for handling all retail payment systems in India, is gearing up to launch RuPay credit card by December this year.

“We had earlier planned to launch the credit card by June, but extended the timeline as we have to get the technology ready. We will definitely launch it by December this year,” A P Hota, Managing Director and CEO, National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI), told The Hans India.

According to him, agreements with banks are already in place and procedural guidelines have been created. “We are confident that at least five banks in India will use our RuPay credit card by March 2017,” Hota maintained.

He further said that RuPay debit cards reached 282 million mark recently and it now accounts for 32 per cent of the debit card market. “We have started from the scratch and reached the milestone in just three-and-a-half years. Over 600 banks are using RuPay card in India,” Hota said.

To take the RuPay debit card global, NPCI has entered into a tie-up with Discover, a US-based debit and credit card company. “Under this tie-up, the US company will facilitate use of RuPay cards globally, while we will facilitate use of its cards in India. We will also tap the partnership for our credit foray,” Hota said.

Currently, NPCL has both domestic and international debit cards. It offers three categories of cards – PMJDY Card, Classic and Platinum. According to him, China is in the processing of building its own global credit and debit on the lines of Mastercard, Visa and Discover. “But we are not that big to create our own global footprint for RuPay card. That’s why we entered into partnership with Discover Card,” he explained.

By P Madhusudhan Reddy