New Delhi, May 8 (KNN)  An indigenous system like RuPay will not only reduce the dependence on cash and cheque modes of settlement but will also make it easier to offer products based on specific requirements of diverse user sets within the country, said President of India, Pranab Mukherjee.
 
He was speaking at a function at the Rashtrapati Bhavan today to dedicate ‘RuPay’ India’s own card payment network to the nation.
 
“Creativity lies in developing products meeting the special needs of the customers by the issuing banks. For a large country like India with a rapidly growing economy, the volume of payment transactions, especially those settled through cards, will be significant in the years ahead.
 
“Transactions which are mostly settled today either by way of cash or cheque will progressively make way for card based payment transactions as the economy matures and internet penetration increases,” the President said.
 
The seven million cards issued so far is only a fraction of the potential, he pointed out.
 
Launch of milk procurement pre-paid card by milk procurement agencies or grain procurement agencies in Punjab are other such variants of the card payment mechanism which only a card payment system developed within the country can appreciate and implement faster.
 
Mukherjee congratulated the Reserve Bank of India for having envisioned the need for such an indigenously managed service in 2005 and for entrusting this task to the National Payments Corporation soon after its operationalization in 2010.
 
It usually takes five to seven years, according to him to build a fully functional card payment network, and so he was happy to note that the NPCI could make the RuPay service operational by April 2013.

Dedication of RuPay to the nation is thus symbolic of the maturity of the payment system development in India and contribution of the National Payments Corporation of India to nation building.   (KNN/ES)