The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which plans to rival Visa and MasterCard with its own RuPay Card, has got a leg up in its plans to provide international access to future RuPay cardholders following a tie-up with Discover Financial Services.
The two partners entered the first phase of their partnership by providing Discover cardholders access to 85,000 ATMs in India which are part of the NPCI network.
Discover Financial Services is a banking and payments services company which competes with payment companies such as Visa and MasterCard and owns the card company Discover, Diners Club cards and Pulse ATM networks. Unlike Visa and MasterCard, which partner banks to enable them issue cards with similar features, Discover adopts a philosophy of partnering local payment networks across the world, including in China, Japan and Korea.
In China, Discover has partnered UnionPay, the largest network in China which will become available to RuPay global cardholders. Worldwide, Discover has a network of two crore retail outlets and 9.5 lakh ATMs which accept Discover Cards.
According to A P Hota, MD & CEO of NPCI, issuance of RuPay International cards would begin from July 2013 with two banks.
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