The Reserve Bank of India came out with a concept paper earlier this week for improving the card acceptance infrastructure and is seeking comments, suggestions and views from relevant players on the same. "The “economics” of card payments plays an important role in ensuring greater and wider participation of all stakeholders involved in the card payments value chain and, as such, any strategy geared towards expansion of the infrastructure in a “managed” way has to also address these issues," the RBI said. Accordingly, the RBI has outlined a broad strategy to enhance the growth in acceptance infrastructure through POS terminals and usage of cards which includes further rationalisation of merchant fees for debit card transactions. Here are some of the take aways from the paper: Card payments in India - The RBI noted that growth in electronic payments is not uniform across all segments nor is it visible at all locations across the country. Particularly, in the context of cards, while the card base is increasing rapidly, activation or usage rates are quite low, especially for purchase of goods and services. Card usage at ATMs, on the other hand, is quite high. - Debit cards registered a growth of 64% between Oct 2013 and Oct 2015 while credit cards grew at 23% during the same period. As at end-December 2015, the total number of credit cards stood at 22.74 million while debit cards stood at 636.85 million cards in the country. - Between Oct 2013 and Oct 2015, ATMs increased by around 43% while…
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