'RuPay aims to gain traction with the India diaspora who believes in the Power of India'
Kunal Kalawatia, Chief of Marketing, NPCI, talks about leveraging the growing need for contactless payments globally
Kunal Kalawatia, Chief of Marketing, NPCI talks about the growing need for contactless payments, technological innovations in digital payments, expansion plans and more.
How has consumer behaviour towards digital payments evolved in the last year?
Digital Payments have been fulfilling the deep need of consumers like ease, speed, and safety. The growth was accelerated and UPI (Unified Payment Interface) in particular. We saw rapid adoption during the pandemic with over 2 billion transactions per month. The pandemic has added hygiene to the need of the consumers and making payments through UPI, RuPay Contactless and NETC solves this need. For the first time, consumers are actively seeking Digital Payments. They have adapted to e-commerce in a big way and Digital Payments have enabled a great experience. The need for hygiene and contactless shopping has catalysed the growth of Digital Payments.
With a push being given to digital payments, what has been NPCI’s role in educating consumers, particularly when some consumers are apprehensive?
Awareness and know-how of digital payments are the first steps for consumers to start using digital payments. The story of UPI is a consumer-driven adoption narrative, starting with peer-to-peer payments; consumers taught consumers and drove adoption. The simplicity of the platform helped educate and bring consumers to adopt it. We have also strengthened the bank branch and business correspondent network with technical and operative know-how, for the last mile consumer reach & education. Over 1000+ ‘Train the trainer’ program across the country in the last 18 months has driven the agenda of financial inclusion with products like UPI, RuPay, NETC, AePS, BHIM and *99#. We are using technology to hasten the process of adoption and support with AI-powered chatbot PAI (Personal AI). PAI currently supports voice and text conversation in two languages - English and Hindi. In the last six months, PAI has integrated with 73 banks and merchants to educate and support consumers with over 8 lacs plus conversations.
What was the insight and objective of the 'UPI Chalega' campaign?
The “UPI Chalega” is a unique intervention along with an ecosystem (syndicated marketing) to increase the know-how of safe usage of the UPI platform. The campaign was well-received by consumers and its use of a variety of media (Influencers, digital, TV, OOH, Cinema, Radio and Print) created a powerful impact on awareness of safe usage of UPI. While we deploy AI to monitor, predict and control frauds, informed and educated consumers is the way to allay the fears associated with any new technology adoption. The result is visible from the post-campaign and during the pandemic of consumers.
What has been the growth seen by NPCI/RuPay in the last year? What is RuPay’s market share in cards issued?
RuPay has seen significant growth in the last five years. It started as a domestic card scheme, and since the beginning, it’s been on a multi-track journey. In the first track, we focussed on the financial inclusion agenda and we believe that RuPay played a big role in the JAM trinity – fuelling the power of Jan Dhan Accounts with a RuPay Card. In the second track, along with Classic and Premium Platinum offering, RuPay has added another premium offering, the Select for top-end consumers. The third track is the use of technology to solve a billion dreams. We are learning from the technologies available and applying them to understanding the Indian consumer.
While we have leapfrogged the world in affordable connectivity, low connectivity in many locations remains a challenge. Another challenge is the large Capex deployment that forces the ecosystem to go asset-light or leverage the existing infra. Offline Contactless and Soft POS are innovative solutions we offer to solve the deeply Indian need to process transactions at scale and in offline mode.
At 600 million, RuPay represents consumer support and is the fastest growing brand on HEART SHARE across Awareness, preference and recommendation. (Source Brand Track conducted by a research agency).
Elaborate on how you plan to build a contactless payment mainstream in India?
UPI QR scan and Pay, toll payments with NETC Fastag, UPI Peer to Peer transfer, Immediate Payments using IMPS, RuPay Contacless Payments, RuPay Wearables and now Offline Payments using the RuPay Cards are all Contactless Payments. A vast majority of Digital payments are contactless payments except for cases when cards are used at a merchant POS or ATM withdrawals. Here too, things are changing with RuPay Contactless payments at merchants, transit and wearables, Cash Withdrawal with UPI QR scan at the ATMs.
Digital payments are driven by the principle of frictionless experiences. Contactless supports this by removing this need to be present or in touch. We along with the ecosystem are working to make the consumer experience as frictionless as possible keeping in mind consumer relevance and safety.
We are working to quickly create a big infrastructure for contactless payments where we deploy SoftPOS - the merchant’s smartphone can become a payment acceptance device by just downloading an app. This solves the need for any incremental capital investment and helps deeper penetration of digital payments in North East and second-tier markets. With a UPI QR scan, consumers can withdraw cash from any ATM without the need for a card. We have also launched the DMRC airport line with RuPay Contactless (NCMC) to enable Contactless payments during the daily commute.
With FASTag now mandatory, how are you creating awareness among vehicle owners?
To create awareness, we created a campaign “NETC FASTag Zaroori Hai” along with member banks. The “NETC FASTag Zaroori hai” message has 3 perspectives: it is compulsory as per NHAI mandate, essential for faster and contactless toll and is an enabler as it aims to make all car journeys for consumers frictionless.
With the campaign, we are addressing two issues - how to get the NETC FASTag and how to recharge it. The campaign is leveraging both traditional and digital channels to reach consumers. At all Toll Plazas, there are member banks issuing and recharging the tags for consumer convenience. Consumers can alternatively login into their banking app and order NETC FASTag.
How many Banks and UPI Apps do you currently operate with?
To reach consumers across the country – Distributing the UPI platform to consumers we have 207 UPI Bank Live - 49-PSP (Payment Service Providers) & 158-Issuer and 20 TPAPs (Third Party Application Providers).
With plans of taking RuPay global, how are you looking to differentiate and take on the competition?
RuPay has been able to establish itself as an innovative and value-conscious product offering in the Indian Market. With 600 Million+ cards in circulation, we are the largest cards scheme in India; enabling acceptance of these cards will certainly add value to businesses of the respective country.
We at NPCI are focused on driving the country’s agenda of displacing cash and it remains our #1 competition. In terms of our market strategy, we have a simplistic approach and will be targeting markets Indians travel for tourism, business and academic purposes. Additionally, the Indian diaspora firmly believes in the power of India, we expect to gain traction with them basis our ‘Made in India’ proposition. Apart from Rupay Cards, we are also focused on enabling acceptance of UPI in International markets. It is a unique solution and has many firsts associated with it. UPI solves for many asks from consumers and the ecosystem like Easy, Safe, Instant, Scalable, and also hygiene.
