India-Japan economic relationship reached a new milestone on Thursday with the public launch of Tokyo-based JCB credit cards’ acceptance in NPCI’s network in India.

With this development, visitors from Japan can now use their JCB cards across ATMs and PoS terminals in India. Every year, nearly two lakh visitors come to India from Japan.

JCB, which is regarded as one of the five big global payment brands, is a leading credit card issuer and acquirer in Japan. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an umbrella institution for all retail payments systems in the country.

Through this strategic partnership, JCB cards’ acceptance coverage in India is expected to reach about 100 per cent for both ATMs and PoS terminals in next six to nine months.

Commenting on the partnership, AP Hota, Managing Director, NPCI, said it had taken six years (from 2011) for the partnership discussions to grow and turn into the launch.

“NPCI-JCB collaboration is one of the most valued alliances for our homegrown card network, Rupay. We are pleased to provide access to about 2,25,000 ATMs and over two million PoS terminals in India through our National Financial Switch and Rupay network,” Hota said.

“Not only are we going to touch every Indian, we want to touch every visitor coming to India with our services. We also want to leverage our network to provide services to as many international companies as possible,” he said.