Rupay card usage jumps

Mumbai: The digital transactions using RuPay cards have seen an exponential growth over the last two months following the demonetisation of high denomination currency notes with the volume and value of transaction rising multiple times compared to the previous months.

According to the data available with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), around 25.46 million transactions worth Rs 3,503 crore were done using the RuPay cards in November, which is more than double the transactions done in past several months both in volume and value terms.

According to industry sources, the numbers could further rise in December to about 50 million transactions amounting to Rs 7,000 crore, which is nearly the double of the November figure.

The numbers are significant considering the fact that only 35.65 million transactions valuing Rs 5,050 crore were executed using RuPay cards during the whole of FY16. There are currently 317 million RuPay cardholders in India with a majority of them (205 million) linked to bank accounts opened under the PM’s Jan Dhan Yojna. NPCI has set a target to take the total number of RuPay cardholders to 400 million in the next one year.

While a significant number of RuPay cardholders are still using it only at ATMs, the company is also focussing to bring more number of cardholders to the digital platform. “RuPay – India’s own card payment network system is on a growth trajectory. When bulk of the RuPay cardholders shift from ATM-only channel to PoS channel as well, we can assume that RuPay has made a difference to the country. I would love to see the daily average PoS transactions from about 2 million to 5 million in about a year’s time,” said A.P. Hota, MD of NPCI.