National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages the RuPay brand of debit cards in India, recently announced that all holders of RuPay debit cards can claim personal accident insurance of up to `1 lakh and those who hold RuPay Platinum cards can claim insurance of up to `2 lakh.
The company is now working on offering the same service as an added benefit on its credit cards, which it plans to launch in September this year, Dilip Asbe, chief operating officer at NPCI told FE.
Both Visa and MasterCard offer accidental insurance only on select products. By making it a default offering on all its cards, RuPay is looking to add to its already sizeable market share. Currently, there are around 260 million RuPay debit cards in force in a market that consists of slightly over 643 million debit cards.
In order to avail the personal accident insurance when in need, a cardholder must make sure that he/she has carried out at least one monetary or non-monetary transaction with his card in the last 90 days so that his account remains active. The company has now decided to also accept transactions carried out through one’s bank account.
“The main purpose is that account holders should keep their account active by initiating transactions — at ATM, POS, MicroATMs or at branch. Financial inclusion would be fruitful if the customer can stay engaged with the formal banking system,” said A P Hota, managing director and chief executive officer at NPCI.
