National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella body for payments and settlement in India, has launched RuPay contactless offline feature for retail payments on a pilot basis. It has features which provide reloadable wallets within the card for day to day transit payments.
Essentially, the RuPay card, with the wallet feature, will enable customers to store money which they can use to make payments despite facing connectivity issues at POS machines.
“These additional features will augment the overall transaction experience for the RuPay cardholders and revolutionise the overall card payment ecosystem”, NPCI said in a statement.
“The RuPay National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) offline wallet can be used to make ticket payments in transit including metros, bus tickets, cab fares etc enabling automatic quick cashless payments, thereby, reducing the wait time, traffic congestion and in turn the transit time,” it added.
Furthermore, NPCI, post Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) approval, has extended the offline wallet facility to retail stores. This will further enable the adoption of digital payments in the country as lack of internet or slow connectivity issues, especially in rural areas and other places, has been one of the many challenges in deepening the adoption of digital payments in the country.
“This facility would be a boost for merchants as it reduces physical payments time to “tap and go” mode and it’s easy acceptance infrastructure facilities smooth payments in areas of poor network coverage,” the NPCI said.
Recently, the RBI increased the limit for contactless card transactions from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000, effective January 1, next year. Experts have suggested that the new enhanced limits for contactless cards will help transition millions of Indian consumers from cash to fast, convenient, and secure forms of digital payments.
“With the advent of the RuPay contactless (offline) feature the acceptance infrastructure for RuPay will increase exponentially and will result in the rapid on-boarding on both merchants and consumers in various geographies across the nation,” said Nalin Bansal, head of RuPay & NFS, NPCI.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital payments in India. Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the flagship payments platform of NPCI, recorded over 2 billion transactions for a second time in a row in November, indicating that the general population has taken to digital payments as more of a way of life. Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) has also touched an all-time high in terms of transactions and their value. In November, IMPS clocked 339.11 million transactions worth Rs 2.76 trillion.
On the other hand, Bharat Bill Payment System recorded 23.93 million transactions worth Rs 3,713.21 crore in November. And, FASTag saw transaction count increase to 124.88 million, up almost 300 per cent from last year.
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