RuPay : A Masterstroke and high demand Payment System from NPCI
RuPay (abbreviation of Rupee and Payment) is an Indian multinational financial services and payment service system, created and launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2012. It was created to fulfil the Reserve Bank of India‘s (RBI) vision of establishing a domestic, open and multilateral system of payments. The RuPay facilitates electronic payment at all Indian banks and financial institutions. NPCI maintains ties with Discover Financial and JCB to enable the RuPay Card scheme to gain a great international acceptance.
As of November 2020, around 75.3 crores (750.3 million) RuPay cards have been issued by nearly 1,158 banks. All merchant discount rate (MDR) charges were eliminated for RuPay transactions from 1 January 2020. All Indian companies with an annual turnover exceeding ₹50 crore (US$6.3 million) are required to offer RuPay Payment options to their customers.
What is RuPay, well explained by this video (credits Business Standard)
Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFVDQKb6u2c
The Facts
RuPay is the first of its kind global card payment network of India, with a very wide acceptance at ATMs, POS devices and e-commerce websites across India. Its a highly secured network that protects against anti Phishing. The name as its derived from ‘RUpee and PAYment’ shows that it is India’s very own initiative for card payments.
Its basically India’s answer to international payment networks like VISA and MASTERCARD.
Internationalization
Around 77.7 crore (777 million) Indian consumers shopped cross-border in 2021. To make payments easier, NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with UK-based PPRO Financial on 17 November 2021 to expand the acceptance of RuPay in foreign markets, especially in China and United States, which account for half of all international transactions coming from India.
Under its Payments Vision 2025, RBI will further push for the internationalization of RuPay, with countries using the United States dollar, Pound sterling and Euro under bilateral treaties.
NIPL signed a definitive agreement with PPRO Financial on 27 April 2023 that will enable acceptance of UPI among international payment service providers (PSPs) and global merchant acquirers.
Products
RuPay offers debit cards, credit cards, prepaid cards and government scheme cards. Government scheme cards include debit and credit cards, such as the RuPay PMJDY, RuPay Mudra and RuPay PunGrain debit cards, and the RuPay Kisan credit card. It also offers combo cards that offer debit and credit, debit and prepaid, or credit and prepaid features through a single card.
RuPay Global
The NPCI started issuing global cards in 2014. Singapore has since then offered assistance to promote India’s digital payment network RuPay card overseas by becoming its first international partner. On 7 March 2012, NPCI entered into a strategic partnership with Discover Financial Services (DFS) for RuPay, enabling RuPay Global Cards to utilize Discover, Diners Club International and PULSE networks for international purchases and cash access outside of India. Both companies also worked to implement D-PAS, Discover’s EMV technology to offer chip-based cards to RuPay card members. The cards are now accepted by over 42.4 million POS terminals and 1.90 million ATMs in 185 countries.
NPCI, with JCB launched the RuPay-JCB Global card on 22 July 2019. After extending domestic POS terminal and ATM support for incoming foreign JCB card holders in 2017, NPCI entered into the second phase of its partnership with the launch of the co-branded card to further increase the international acceptance of RuPay. The card will offer special cashback programmes for POS transactions outside India, in addition to selected popular international destinations for travellers. It will support additional services such as in-city JCB Lounges located in airports with round the year merchant promotions all over the world. While debit cards are only being issued initially through the partnership, credit and prepaid cards are also on the anvil.
RuPay issued 64 million Global Cards between 2014 and March 2019. RuPay has till now tied up with international players like Discover, Japan Credit Bureau and China Union Pay to enhance its international acceptance and recently achieved the milestone of issuing 25 million RuPay – Discover global cards. As per JCB Co., Ltd., 1 million RuPay-JCB co-badged cards are in circulation in India in premium category.
RuPay has several agreements with other international payment networks. Some major examples include:
- Discover
- Diners Club International
- Pulse in United States
- JCB in Japan
- NETS in Singapore
- UnionPay in China
- BC Card in South Korea
- Elo in Brazil
- DinaCard in Serbia
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