Indepay Networks to launch secured prepaid cards

Amid government efforts to curtail usage of cash in transactions, payments firm Indepay Networks will launch prepaid cards in February for facilitating secured payments.

Customers will be able to use these cards for making payments and cash withdrawal from ATMs, Indepay Networks President and CEO Rajib Saha told PTI.

"We will be launching this card in February this fiscal.

We are aiming 100 million customers in the coming years. This is a new category of cards which is different from debit and credit cards," he said.

He said the company is already working on a pilot basis in several cities across the country and has about 10 lakh customers.

Saha said customers can get these cards easily from Indepay's partner banks or business points.

"One can easily recharge these and use for all purposes - be it making payments or withdrawing cash. We will be leveraging Aadhaar number for this," he said, adding that the company carry out big publicity and communication programme to boost awareness about the cards.

He claimed that at a time when people are apprehensive about using debit and credit cards due to cyber frauds, "these prepaid cards are much safer and easy to use".

Further use of these cards will also reduce the transaction cost of merchants and provide incentives to customers.

Indepay is already working with banks in India, Indonesia and other Asian countries.

In India, the company has already tied-up with the State Bank of India as the first banking partner, acquiring more than 1.25 million customers.

It is active in states like Uttar Pradesh (West), Delhi/ NCR, northeast and Rajasthan.

"Indepay realises that the present day interchange networks dominated by Visa and MasterCard are in need of a lower cost prepaid model to make their network accessible to merchants and unbanked and under-banked masses," he added.

The prepaid model of the company would decrease the dependence on bank branch infrastructure, hence facilitating accelerated adoption of cashless transactions, he said.