Central Bank Of India Launches RuPay Business Platinum Debit Card

Central Bank of India (CBoI) has partnered with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to launch a tailor-made offering for businesses – ‘Central Bank of India RuPay Business Platinum Debit Card’.

The card offers businesses, ATM withdrawal limit of INR 1 Lakh along with a purchase of up to INR 3 Lakh at point of sale (PoS) or ecommerce platforms. 

Startups and other businesses also can withdraw up to INR 75,000 at ATMs abroad and perform purchases globally worth up to INR 3 Lakh at PoS and international online merchants. 

Along with a purchase protection coverage of INR 2 Lakh, customers using this card will get accidental death and air accident coverage worth INR 10 Lakh and INR 20 Lakh respectively. The CBoI RuPay Business Platinum Debit Cardholders will be able to earn reward points on every purchase.

Rajeev Puri, executive director, Central Bank of India said that the card will expand the digital footprints to the bank’s several business and MSME customers.

The offering is expected to support small businesses including several startups and MSMEs in terms of easy availability of cash along with digital payments.

Rupay is a product of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and competes with the American payments giants MasterCard and Visa in India.

Evergrowing Indian Fintech Space

India has witnessed a robust growth trajectory in terms of financial technologies along with digital payments.

According to latest data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), debit card payments in FY21 stood at INR 6.61 Lakh Cr and credit card payments were at INR 6.30 Lakh Cr.

Just a week back, Mastercard and Google rolled out tokenisation to enable Google Pay users to transact using their Mastercard credit and debit cards.

Through tokenisation, users of Mastercard cardholders can make payments through a secure digital token without having to share their credit or debit card details such as card number, expiry date and other details with a merchant, said a joint statement from the companies.

UPI transactions in the country too have witnessed a massive surge amid the pandemic. Last month, UPI transactions had crossed the $100 Bn value mark for the first time. With 418 Cr transactions worth INR 7.68 Lakh Cr (approx $102.4 Bn) in November this year, UPI has maintained the milestone, with a tepid fall from October 2021.

According to NPCI data, October 2021 had recorded 421 Cr transactions worth INR 7.71 Lakh Cr (approx $103 Bn), a rise of 15.3% month-on-month (MoM), a major of which could be attributed to the festive season. Meanwhile, in November, NPCI posted a fall of 0.39% in UPI value and 0.71% in transaction count.

In October, PhonePe led the UPI numbers with 193 Cr transactions worth INR 3.65 

Lakh Cr and Google Pay maintained its second lead with 145 Cr transactions worth INR 2.87 Lakh Cr. Next in line were Paytm (632 Mn transactions worth INR 80,508 Cr); Amazon Pay (68.82 Mn transactions worth INR 6,286 Cr) and WhatsApp Pay (2.6 Mn transactions worth INR 104 Cr).

Earlier this month Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the initiatives in the fintech space in India should now turn into a ‘fintech revolution’ by financially empowering every citizen of the country.

Further, in a major move to widen the reach of digital payments in the country, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed to introduce UPI payments services for feature phone users.