RuPay -- India’s very own payment gateway was dedicated to the nation by President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday. On par with Visa and Mastercard, the card will work on ATMs and merchant outlets and help in reducing cash transactions.
RuPay, which works on three channels -- ATMs, Point of Sales (POS) and online sales, is the seventh such payment gateway in the world.
Dedicating the platform, he said India is among the few nations to have its own card payment gateway to the to the nation the President said with development of the payment gate way developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)-it is being used by certain banks including ICICI, State Bank of India, PNB, among others, for clearing and settlement.
Further, a separate card for payment of milk purchases has also been launched.
Complementing the NPCI (which got fully functional in 2010) for having established the gateway in record time. President Mukherjee said it usually takes five to seven years to build a fully functional card payment network.
A variant of pre-paid RuPay card is also on the anvil and would shortly be launched by IRCTC, for booking railway tickets.
The gateway will not only reduce dependence on cash, but will offer users diverse set of payment options within the country, Mukherjee said.
According to NPCI Chairman Balachandran M, the NPCI board plans to take RuPay card overseas and is already in talks with Discover Financial Services in the US and JDC in Japan for partnership.
Speaking on the occasion, Financial Services Secretary G S Sandhu said RuPay would be available at a cost which is much less than those of international cards.
For clearing and settlement of each transactions, banks will have to pay 40% lower fees in RuPay platform compared to other international platforms.