Bhubaneswar, Jan 9: Following the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to convert Kisan Credit Card to RuPay cards, the Odisha government has set a target to provide RuPay card to 11.40 lakh farmers by March this year. Cooperation minister, Damodar Rout informed the media that the state government is bound to implement the RuPay card scheme of the Centre. He, however, said it is not possible to tell about the benefits of this scheme before its implementation. Tusharkanta Panda, Managing Director, Odisha State Cooperative Bank, stated that the farmers can withdraw limited amount of money from any ATM of any nationalized or private banks through RuPay card. Besides, steps are been taken to provide Point of Sale (POS) machines in all 708 Samitis through which the farmers can withdraw money by swiping their card.
This Indian domestic card scheme was conceived and launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to fulfil the objective of the Reserve Bank of India to have a domestic, open loop, and multilateral system of payments in the country.
In a letter to Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Managing Director of Odisha State Cooperative Bank (OSCB), DGM, RBI and DGM, Nabard, Bhubaneswar, Deputy Secretary, Cooperation, SK Mishra had said that as per the terms of National Mission on Financial Inclusion, all the agricultural borrowers from the banking system need to be covered under RuPay Kisan Credit Card. Since the Centre is giving emphasis on digital payments eco system in rural areas and agriculture sector post demonetization, there is a need to issue RuPay Kisan Card to all agricultural borrowers in short term cooperative credit structure on priority basis. As part of its initiative, the Kisan Card has been redesigned with a microchip which will have detailed information about the card holder. Till date, several cooperative banks and commercial banks in Odisha have distributed 44 lakh and 9 lakh Kisan Cards respectively. The state government has set a target to convert these Kisan Cards to RuPay debit cards by June this year.
RuPay is a combination of two words, Rupee and Payment. RuPay is an Indian version of credit/debit card. It is very similar to international cards such as Visa/Master. RuPay debit cards are similar any other debit cards. One can access them in the 1.45 lakh ATMs and 8.75 lakh POS terminals across the country. It will also be accepted on 10,000 e-commerce websites. All major public sector banks, including SBI, have started issuing these cards to all their customers. The card also comes with a high end technology chip named EMV (Europay, Master Card and Visa) especially for high end transactions. It also has an embedded microprocessor circuit with information about the card holder. Users will get alerts for every transaction made through this card whose processing fees compared with regular debit/credit cards will be considerably lower.
