Snapdeal partners with RuPay for festive discounts

E-commerce marketplace Snapdeal has partnered with NPCI's RuPay to offer discounts to its debit and credit card users in the upcoming festive season, in a bid to cash on the growing popularity of the homegrown payment gateway.

This partnership offers RuPay's nearly 600 million users an instant 20 per cent discount when they use their debit or credit cards to buy on Snapdeal in the coming festive season, the e-commerce platform said in a statement.

As per an RBI document, about 586 million RuPay cards were issued as on March 31, 2019, which accounts for more than 50 per cent share of such cards issued in the country.

SBI Card is also in process of issuing RuPay credit cards.

People make lot of purchases during Navratras and Diwali, the biggest shopping season in India.

Other e-commerce platforms, including Flipkart and Amazon, too have announced mega festive sale, beginning September 29.

Snapdeal further said upcoming metros as well as tier II and tier III cities are some of its biggest markets.

"Given the annual festive season spike in online sales, Snapdeal is using its Diwali sales to take e-commerce deeper into these markets," it added.

These markets, it said are also seeing steady growth in acceptance for digital payments solutions.

"RuPay has a strong penetration of cards, especially in non-metros, offering consumers diverse payment options including UPI, credit and debit cards. The cards issued under Jan Dhan Yojana, also have RuPay powered cards," it said.

Snapdeal's buyers get an opportunity to save Rs 150 per card in the festive season and with many households having multiple RuPay cards, the savings get multiplied. No minimum transaction is required for users to avail discounts on RuPay.

Last year, it partnered with 13 international, national and regional banks, and 3 digital wallets to offer nearly Rs 100 crore worth of discounts to users who opted for digital payments for their purchases on the platform, Snapdeal said.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was incorporated in 2008 as an umbrella organization for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.