NPCI enables payment aggregators to allow UPI payments via RuPay credit cards

Following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) latest move to allow users to link RuPay credit cards to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the National Payments Corporation of India and payment aggregators on Wednesday said it would collaboration to support credit transactions. 

In a statement, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said it enabled key aggregators like BharatPe, Cashfree Payments, Google Pay, Razorpay, Paytm, PayU, and Pine Labs to help merchant transactions through RuPay credit cards on UPI in the Indian market.

In June last year, the RBI said it would soon allow users to link RuPay credit cards to UPI, allowing people to use their credit cards to make UPI payments.

UPI customers could earlier make transactions only through their bank accounts, overdraft accounts, and prepaid accounts. Now, by linking RuPay credit cards to UPI, customers can directly transact by scanning a merchant's QR code without the need to use credit cards.

RuPay credit cards issued by Bank of Baroda, HDFC Bank, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, Indian Bank, and Canara Bank can link their cards to UPI applications like BHIM, Paytm, and others.

“After the RBI’s decision to start linking RuPay credit cards to UPI, we immediately started enabling leading payment aggregators to boost merchant acceptance and customer awareness to attract early and widespread adoption," said Nalin Bansal, Chief of Corporate and Fintech Relationships and Key Initiatives, NPCI. "Going ahead, we aim to explore more relevant avenues to promote the adoption of digital payments via credit cards on UPI for smoother, more reliable, and secure credit-based transactions to underwrite every eligible Indian."

About 250 million Indians use UPI for daily transactions, while nearly 50 million users have one or more credit cards.

The linkage of credit cards with UPI will also lead to a rise in acceptability as UPI provides customers with more points of acceptance through the vast network of UPI QR codes. It is also beneficial to merchants in semi-urban areas, as card point-of-sale (POS) terminals are not widely available.