RuPay cards fail to strike roots
Even the public transportation services like Delhi Metro and Hyderabad Metro do not accept the indigenously developed card.
Hyderabad: While MasterCard has lodged a protest with the US government over Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly promoting the RuPay card, it remains unacceptable at various places including Hyderabad Metro, Delhi Metro and Flipkart among others in India.
The backing to India’s domestic payments network is said to have taken a toll on the supremacy of US payment giants such as MasterCard and Visa. Following demonetisation, Mr Modi started promoting the use of digital payments which gave a major boost to RuPay leading to more than 1 billion debit and credit cards of the homegrown network being issued. However, this payment network has integration issues with various players. Several citizens have been raising issues with RuPay integration. Only one of the two big e-commerce giant Amazon accepts the card while Flipkart does not.
Whenever a user enters details of the RuPay card, they are told: “Sorry, your RuPay debit/credit card is not enabled for online transactions, Please contact your bank”.
A netizen, Mr Pratik Pede, said on the social messaging platform Twitter: “Flipkart does not accept RuPay card on their site and displays a wrong message that card is not enabled for transaction when the card is very much accepted and enabled on sites like Amazon.”
Despite being indigenous, Flipkart said that it would take up integration of RuPay but that it currently accepted payments made using Visa, MasterCard and Maestro cards.
Even the public transportation services like Delhi Metro and Hyderabad Metro do not accept the indigenously developed card.
A user, Mr R. Raghunath who tried to booked flight tickets on Oman Air said the airline doesn’t accept RuPay or BHIM UPI. In a tweet, he said, “I booked flight tickets for my journey from Hyderabad to Muscat by Oman Air. I had to use Visa card though the payment is in Rupees. This is the state of affairs with rupay card (sic)”.
Another user, Mr Sundeep A., said, “Hyderabad metro ticket counters accept only visa or MasterCard. The person at counter said rupay cards don’t work (sic).”
Several users have been raising concerns of failing to make online transactions with RuPay card. It is evident that it will take time before RuPay gains acceptance and lot of services need to be integrated. A RuPay spokesperson noted, “We are working towards integrating more merchants.”