RuPay
More info
- Creator
- NPCI
- Released
- 2012
- Type
- Card network
India's domestic card network, built so that Indian card payments wouldn't have to route through American networks.
The name squashes together rupee and payment. It is run by the National Payments Corporation of India, the same body behind UPI. The breakthrough came with the Jan Dhan scheme in 2014, which handed a RuPay debit card to hundreds of millions of newly opened bank accounts. The number of cards consequently grew far faster than the number of places using them.
The government has kept a thumb on the scale ever since. Merchant fees on RuPay debit cards were set to zero in 2020, and since 2022 RuPay credit cards can be linked to UPI. Abroad, the cards mostly work through deals with Discover and JCB.