Rupay goes international; UAE to use the tech for creating domestic card network

Recently the RBI allowed RuPay to issue foreign currency cards.

National Payments Corporation of India, International has announced a strategic partnership with Al Etihad Payments (AEP), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) to advance the development of the UAE’s first national Domestic Card Scheme (DCS) like that of India's Rupay.

The agreement was exchanged between Saif Humaid Al Dhaheri, Assistant Governor – Strategy, Financial Infrastructure, and Digital Transformation at CBUAE and Chairman of AEP, and Dilip Asbe, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of NPCI, representing NPCI International Payments Limited.

"Scheduled to launch in early 2024, the DCS will aim to facilitate the growth of e-commerce and digital transactions in the UAE, bolster financial inclusion, and support the nation’s digitisation agenda," NPCI said in a prepared statement on October 9.

The move is part of the UAE's Financial Infrastructure Transformation (FIT) programme introduced in 2023.

CBUAE’s launch of Al Etihad Payments aims to implement an innovative, interoperable, and enabling payments infrastructure allowing licensed financial institutions and payment service providers to further enhance customer experience through advanced payment solutions.

This comes after India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on October 5 that India and the UAE have signed an MoU on the cooperation in the field of industries and advanced technologies.

Both sides on the same day also signed an agreement for the National Payments Corporation of India's international arm to partner with UAE to develop a Domestic Card Stack similar to RuPay.

"This partnership aligns perfectly with NIPL's global mission to offer our knowledge and expertise to assist other countries in establishing their own cost-effective and secure payment services. Our DCS solution is based on the principles of sovereignty, speed to market, innovation, digitisation, and strategic independence," said Ritesh Shukla, CEO of NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL).

This comes on the heels of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)'s efforts to bring the homegrown RuPay card on par with global card networks such as Mastercard and Visa.

In fact, recently the RBI allowed RuPay to issue foreign currency cards. The central bank said it will allow the issuance of RuPay prepaid forex cards by banks in India for use at ATMs, PoS machines, and online merchants overseas.

NPCI International also announced on July 24 that it has issued over 10,000 RuPay cards, a global card payment network from India in Bhutan. Apart from Bhutan, Singapore and Nepal have already launched RuPay cards.

"The development of the DCS in the UAE is an integral FIT initiative and an achievement in the payments space which seeks to support the growth of digital transactions and e-commerce whilst ensuring business continuity," said Khaled Mohamed Balama, Governor of CBUAE.