After increasing its market share to 38 per cent in the debit card segment, RuPay, domestic card payment service provider, will be venturing into the credit card space this September.

• It plans to issue 100,000 such cards in the first year of its launch.
• It will initially focus on two variants of a credit card — Regular and Platinum — and gradually extend its portfolio to offer co-branded cards.
• RuPay is a brand owned and developed by NPCI (from 2012) to compete against global payment schemes of the likes of Visa and MasterCard.
• NPCI was promoted by 10 Indian banks.
• From 2017, the target is to issue 500,000 to a million such credit cards every year.
• The market size of credit cards is presently 22.75 million users and the average value of spending a year is about Rs 2.5 lakh crore.
• The brand, according to a joint study by JM Financial Securities and RuPay, has gained more than a third of market share in total cards and 18 per cent in volume of debit card transactions.
• NPCI is also optimistic about the 11 payments banks and eight small finance banks commencing operations over the next two years, helping it further its market share.

RuPay

• RuPay is an Indian domestic card scheme conceived and launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
• It was created to fulfil the Reserve Bank of India’s desire to have a domestic, open loop, and multilateral system of payments in India.
• RuPay facilitates electronic payment at all Indian banks and financial institutions, and competes with MasterCard and Visa in India.
• NPCI maintains ties with Discover Financial to enable the card scheme to gain international acceptance