Rupay : India`s Own payment brand card

There are 225 Million ATM cards in India, of which 90 Million are from a single Bank- State Bank of India, 0.55 Million merchants have PoS machines, Rs 3000 Crore is being dispensed every day from ATM machines. We are using American Branded Visa and Master Cards for all these. How much money they are making from giving their technology and brand name? What is the volume of personal financial data is getting transferred to US every day? So there comes an idea of India’s own card brand- RuPay.

NPCI- National Payment Corporation of India is a section 25 non profit organization formed by RBI and other Indian Banks. To bring the competition in cards, reduce the cost of card payments and card issuance and most importantly to secure the data within the nation NPCI has brought its own brand of card called RuPay. Already 12 co-operative banks and Regional Rural Banks are using the RuPay ATM cards, which can be used to withdraw cash from ATMs. By the end of March 2012, debit card will be launched using the flat form of Axis Bank and SBI as acquirer (bank to which PoS machines belongs to) and issuer of cards and Union Bank of India and Bank of India as card issuer. RuPay card holder can do shopping by April 2012. It will be ready for online transactions i.e. ecommerce by June 2012.

Apart from the main stream card business RuPay is also concentrating on financial inclusion. Adhar enabled biometric cards are being issued in Jarkhand by Axis Bank, Bank of India and SBI. RBI has given permission to 18 prepaid card service provider to issue prepaid cards with easy KYC to non bank customers and migrant labours.

RuPay will not be just an domestic card. RuPay has tie up with Discover Cards which is a neutral player for Indian market and 3rd largest card issuer (Visa and Master occupy first two positions and Amex occupy the position next to Discover. RuPay cost is 50% lesser than the Visa and Master cards which are dominating Indian market.

Indian internet economy

Internet’s contribution to GDP will grow from $30 billion to $100 billion by 2015

The Internet has established its role as a powerful economic force multiplier with a new study projecting that its contribution to India’s GDP will explode to $100 billion (Rs. 5 lakh crore) by 2015 from $30 billion (Rs.1.5 lakh crore) at present.

The study on the “Impact of Internet on the Indian Economy” by McKinsey, which is still to be released, could well become a new anchor for the government’s programmes to enhance digital citizenship.

Revealing the highlights of the study, in the presence of Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal at a curtain raiser held to announce a two-day multistakeholder conference on Internet governance to be held at FICCI here on October 4-5, McKinsey said the contribution of the Internet to global GDP is roughly three per cent or $1.7 trillion and its performance in India will eventually mirror this trend.

The world currently has 2 billion Internet users, of whom 50 per cent live outside the developed world. The global Internet population is projected to climb to 2.6-2.9 billion by 2015. According to McKinsey, of this, 30 “aspiring countries” with a very high economic growth have seen Internet users grow at five times the level in the developed world. In the next 10 years, netizens in these 30 countries are projected to grow at 10 times the pace in the developed world.

By 2015, based on existing projections, India, which with 120 million users has the third largest Internet user base in the world, is projected to hit 350 million, catapulting it to a global ranking of 2, with the fastest rate of growth. An alternative growth model used by McKinsey, factoring in the trend that wireless-based expansion usually overshoots any standard formula, presents a more ambitious forecast of half a billion Internet users by 2015. This is good news for mobile companies since three out of every four or 75 per cent of all new Internet users in India are expected to go online, using wireless devices. Globally, 15-20 per cent of the users access Internet on wireless technologies, while in India this figure will eventually be closer to 55 per cent.