Today, there are over 1,100 banks issuing around 600 million RuPay cards.

India’s own RuPay card is gradually going global and giving tough competition to international players like Master Card and Visa. RuPay is India’s domestic payment card conceived and launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) seven years ago.

RuPay currently has 33% market share of card transactions. Today, there are over 1,100 banks issuing around 600 million RuPay cards, half of which are in the mid and premium segments. It has collaborated with more than 600 international, regional and local banks across the country. Apart from India, it has been launched in foreign countries like Singapore, Bhutan, Bahrain, UAE and is going to be launched in Saudi Arabia next week during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

According to figures of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), RuPay reported 1 billion transactions through both online and offline merchant payment modes during 2018-19, about 70% jump compared to the 667 million transactions during 2017-18. Interestingly, RuPay transactions had risen 135% in the fiscal year 2018, compared to the previous year.

In contrast, debit cards overall were swiped 4.4 billion times for merchant payments in the financial year 2019, a jump of 32% from 3.3 billion transactions in the financial year 2018. It grew about 40% in financial year 2018, compared to financial year 2017.

RuPay is India’s first-of-its-kind domestic debit and credit card payment network, with wide acceptance at ATMs, POS devices and e-commerce websites across India. It is a highly secure network that protects against cyber hacks and is India’s version of the Master Card and Visa. It has been developed to offer secure, user friendly and cost-effective solutions to facilitate low value payments and build a cashless transaction environment.

According to a senior official of a private bank, RuPay is being increasingly preferred, although on a low base, and this could be because more people are using cards for payment in smaller cities and towns. He said that though the government has not mandated that only these cards should be issued, a large number of public sector banks are issuing RuPay cards.

India will launch RuPay card in Saudi Arabia during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the country to help the Indian pilgrims visiting Mecca and Madina. With this, Saudi Arabia would become the third country in the Gulf region to get the RuPay card facility after the UAE and Bahrain. The Prime Minister is slated to visit Saudi Arabia on 29 October, where he will hold a bilateral meeting with Saudi Arabia King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in Riyadh.

As a result of the growth of RuPay cards, American payment card firms Master Card and Visa have been losing market share since the November 2016 demonetisation drive, which was aimed at promoting digital payments. According to a media report, Master Card wrote to the US government in June last year, complaining against the Indian government using nationalism to promote the use of domestic payments network RuPay, and noted that New Delhi’s protectionist policies were hurting foreign payment companies.

RuPay has also tied-up with international players like Discover, Japan Credit Bureau and China Union Pay to enhance its international acceptance and recently achieved a milestone of issuing 25 million RuPay-Discover global cards. NPCI issues RuPay Global cards that run on the Discover Network when used outside India.