NPCI to roll out RuPay credit cards

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will be commercially launching its credit cards in a month's time, in order to increase penetration of the credit card usage in the country. The company will also be launching tap-and-go-transit card in Kochi and Bengaluru by the end of this week.

Speaking to reporters in Chennai, Balachandran M, chairman of NPCI said, “The Rupay Credit Cards are ready for usage and 10 banks are using it in a pilot stage. We will be launching it in a month's time commercially”.

The banks which are working on the credit card includes public sector banks and a cooperative bank.

At present, of the 800 million cards used in the country only around 25 million are credit cards, while the rest are debit cards. This ratio is low compared to that of the countries like US and some of the European countries, said A P Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI.

He added that the RuPay card is advantageous for both the banks and the customers compared to the other international cards which are prominant in the market. The company charges a fixed fee for the product and the cost of transaction is lesser than the existing products in the market, he added.

There will be four variants for the RuPay Credit Cards, including Select, a premium card, Platinum which has certain limitations compared to the high end model and Classic, the lowest limit card, apart from a RuPay Mudra Card.

Balachandran added that the company will be launching new products, such as a tap-and-go transit card which will be introduced in Kochi and Bengaluru this weekend. The product would be used in the public transport systems and metro rail systems. It is also looking at launching the same service in the Chennai Metro Rail, he added.

The company is also working on various Near Field Communication (NFC) systems, which would be ready in next six to nine months, said senior officials from the company. The credit and debit cards will be enabled with NFC, apart from transaction from mobile phones using NFC.

Responding to a querry on the security aspects and the reports during last year that around 32 lakh debit cards were compromised, they said that around 2000 cars were actually misused out of the suspected 32 lakh and the total loss was detected as less than Rs 10 crore.