India Signs MoU with Saudi Arabia to Launch RuPay card in Gulf Kingdom

To launch the RuPay Card in county, India signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday making it 3rd nation in the West Asia to initiate the India’s digital payment system which will benefit not only the 2.6 million Indians in Gulf Kingdom but also in Haj and Umrah Pilgrims.

RuPay Card is the first-of-its-kind Indian Domestic Debit and Credit Card payment network and also accepted at ATMs, POS device and on e-commerce websites.
RuPay Card is introduced in 2012 to achieve the vision of Reserve Bank of India i.e. to have a domestic, open and multilateral system of payments.
As India has already launched RuPay Card in UAE, Bahrain, Singapore and Bhutan.

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit, an MoU was signed to launch the RuPay cards in Saudi Arabia, said a joint statement issued at the end of his visit.
In Saudi Arabia, over 2.6 million Indians are working, which is the largest expatriate community in the country. Every year around 2 hundred thousand Haj pilgrims and over 3 hundred thousand Umrah pilgrims visit to Saudi Arabia from India and the acceptance of RuPay Card allow them to transact at cheaper rates.

RuPay is a highly secure network that protects against cyberhacks and is India’s version of Master Card and Visa.

Currently, in India, there are around 500 million RuPay Cards in circulation.

To enhance its international acceptance RuPay has tied-up with international players like Discover, Japan Credit Bureau and China Union Pay. It has also achieved a milestone of issuing 25 million RuPay Cards.

India’s relations with Saudi Arabia have been on an upswing over the last few years based on burgeoning energy ties besides cooperation in several other areas. Prime Minister Modi’s first visit to Riyadh in 2016 put bilateral ties on a new trajectory.

Source: IBEF

Image Courtesy: Narendra Modi Twitter