NPCI waives service fees on cards, e-commerce till December 31

Hota said the NPCI wants to encourage usage of cards at merchant outlets as well on e-commerce portals, especially established sellers of online goods are increasing rapidly.

Mumbai, Nov 14 Within hours of the Union Cabinet decision in this regard on Monday, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced waiving of switching fee for all RuPay Issuing and Acquiring member banks for Point of Sales (PoS) and e-commerce transactions.

The waiver of 60 paise to the card issuing banks and 30 paise to the card accepting bank of Acquirer, shall be effective from November 11 till December 31, NPCI Managing Director and CEO A.P. Hota said.

"This demonstrates our commitment towards making electronic transactions cost-effective for banks. The government's move on demonetisaion of high denomination currency notes is the trigger point for pressing the fast-forward button for digital payments," Hota added.

The added objective is to support banks in activating existing RuPay cards, issue new cards to un-carded customers and to widen the acceptance points.

Hota said the NPCI wants to encourage usage of cards at merchant outlets as well on e-commerce portals, especially established sellers of online goods are increasing rapidly.

India currently has around 1.40 million PoS terminals and the acceptance points are growing.

With the right push, around 755 million debit card customers can generate about 50 million transactions, or 10 times, daily from the current levels of barely five million a day, said Hota.

IANS