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Issuance of ATM/ RuPay Debit cards
4.1 The revised guideline of KCC dtd 29 March 2012 suggested the withdrawal
through ATM/ debit cards & operations through PoS available with sugar mills/
input dealers as some of the options for withdrawal of KCC loan sanctioned to
a farmer. Further, in a meeting of Union Finance Minister with Bankers on 15
November 2012, it was decided to convert all old KCCs into ATM-cum-Debit/
RuPay Cards by June 2013 and thereafter, number of initiatives were made to
expedite the process of issuance of ATM/ debit cards by the banks. While reviewing
the progress of the KCC scheme on 15 Nov 2015, the Ministry of Finance,
Department of Financial Services, GOI had observed that the implementation of
the scheme among cooperative banks and RRBs was not very satisfactory.
4.2 NABARD vide circular No 115/ DoR-35/2013 dated 16 May 2013 had advised
the controlling offices of the banks to issue the instructions to all the branches
for converting all KCCs into ATM-cum-Debit/RuPay Cards immediately. It was
also suggested that the implementation of the scheme may also be monitored at
Senior Management level at Head office of the banks on Weekly basis and also
the progress in this regard may be placed before the respective boards regularly.
NABARD once again vide circular No 159/ DoR /2013 dated 24 July 2013
reiterated that all the branches to convert their KCCs into ATM-cum-Debit/RuPay
Cards latest by 31 August 2013. It may be mentioned here that GIZ – NABARD
Rural Financial Institutions Programme in Cooperation with NPCI had prepared
a ‘Reference Guide for On-boarding ‘RuPay Kisan Card’ and ‘RuPay Debit Cards’
for the benefit of the banks, which is readily available with all the banks.
I. Role of NPCI in Promoting RuPay Cards:
4.3 National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an umbrella organization for
all retail payments system in India. It was set up with the guidance and support of
the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA). During the
last five years, the transactions have grown multi-fold from 2 million a day to 20
million now. From a single service of switching of inter-bank ATM transactions,
the range of services have grown to Cheque Clearing, Immediate Payments
Service (24 x 365), Automated Clearing House, Electronic Benefit Transfer and
a domestic card payment network named RuPay to provide an alternative to
international card schemes. As on end-October 2015 over 220 Million Indians
own RuPay cards.
4.4 RuPay, a new card payment scheme launched by the National Payments
Corporation of India (NPCI), has been conceived to offer a domestic, open-loop,
multilateral system which allows all Indian banks and financial institutions in
India to participate in electronic payments. The RuPay debit card is conceived to
have the following benefits:
(i) Since the transaction processing happens domestically, it leads to lower cost
of clearing and settlement for each transaction. This makes the transaction
cost affordable and drives usage of cards in the industry.
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