RuPay is launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that offers is an Indian domestic card scheme. It is the Indian version of the credit/debit card which is quite similar to the international cards like Visa/Master. RuPay aims to compete with Visa and MasterCard that are already strong players in the segment. RuPay gained prominence as under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana scheme RuPay cards were given to all the accounts started under it and have issued around 180.1 million cards on 219.3 million accounts that have opened so far.
RuPay was all set to launch its credit card services but has delayed the same further as the NPCI does not seems to be ready to handle the higher capacity of financial transactions. They are working on higher capacity financial technology infrastructure, as their aim is to focus on the top end segment. They are focusing to launch gold and platinum cards as they believe higher-end variants shall provide them better growth. But later on they shall launch cards targeting all types of variants as their target is to reach the 100-million volume capacity, which might take two-three years as of now.
A P Hota, managing director and chief executive officer, NPCI – “RuPay credit card was going to be launched in June 2016 but the launch has been further put off. The board approved date for the launch on August 28 but I think that will be a challenge. But, we will definitely launch the credit card in 2016”.
He further added- “Currently, we have a switching system from Euronet. This has a capacity of 40 million transactions a day. However, the peak volume that we have processed is 14 million. But to be on a safe side, we have started work on a 100-million transaction capacity owned by FIS,” added Hota.
Verdict: It’s always great to develop an efficient infrastructure before entering into any segment. Not only is that, after becoming a renowned name in the segment, proper planning become necessary whenever you decide to launch any new service among your customers, otherwise it delivers a negative impact and reflects lack of planning too.
Author: Mrs. Viveka Verma Nagar