National Payments Corp calls bids to assess how people see RuPay cards

Launched with much fanfare as an Indian alternative to MasterCard and Visa, home-grown RuPay cards are to soon get a brand healthcheck.

On Wednesday, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) put out a Request For Proposal, for market research agencies to conduct a survey of RuPay cards’ positioning and customer base. 

This is to assess if things are on track for the aim of building RuPay into India’s preferred, reliable, open-loop payment system. 

The cards were launched in 2012 and gained prominence when the government pushed banks to issue these along with the Jan-Dhan accounts opened under one of the prime minister’s flagship account opening projects.

RuPay cards still have a limited market share but over 350 million of these have been issued and almost 97 per cent of point-of-sale terminals accept these as a payment medium. 

NPCI now wishes to assess its position in the market. 

 

It expects the agencies which bid to conduct four waves – one in each quarter – of market research on the demand, to see where it stands versus the competition from international behemoths and if the campaigns on awareness are working. 

“It [is] also important for NPCI to know brand perception, brand persona, change in customer base over the period, etc,” the bid document states. 

“NPCI will be assigning the  successful bidder to conduct a market research exercise to understand the brand’s health vis-à-vis competition in terms of salience, consumption and disposition, as well as perception to the brand’s health at regular intervals.” 

In sum, NPCI would like to know the customer awareness about RuPay and where the brand is positioned in users’ minds. 

Also, to track and understand usage patterns and the preferred category of spending with the various types of cards in this study. 

The study will be across 16 cities — including Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bengaluru -- and involve at least 3,200 respondents, via in-person and computer-aided interviews. 

The target group is working males and females in the age group of 21-50 years. 

Also, a respondent must be among the key decision makers in a household, have at least one savings account and  be using at least one debit or credit card. NPCI has given time till June 13 for bids.