ICICI Merchant Services Pvt. Ltd.’s Internet payment gateway soon will begin enabling India’s online merchants to accept MasterCard Worldwide’s Maestro PIN-debit cards, the India-based company announced on Sept. 27.
The acquirer says it is the first in India to offer secure Maestro card acceptance online, and the upgrade will ensure that the company’s online merchants may accept Maestro cards issued anywhere in the world.
“A large portion of the Indian consumers [soon will] have the ability to utilize their Maestro debit cards online and make purchases from merchants in India and globally,” B. Amrish Rau, general manager for First Data India and ICICI Merchant Services, said in a statement.
ICICI Merchant Service is a joint venture company that formed when First Data Corp acquired an 81% stake in ICICI Bank’s point-of-sale terminal business for US$80 million at the end of last year (
No Indian online merchants yet accept PIN-debit cards online.
A broad range of banks in India issue the Maestro debit cards. In a statement, MasterCard says some 652 million Maestro cards are on issue globally, though it did not disclose card data specific to India.
Officials from both MasterCard and ICICI Merchant Service did not respond to PaymentsSource requests for comment, and the news release announcing the Maestro initiative did not explain how ICICI would enable PIN-debit purchases online and what processes merchants, issuers and consumers would have to use.
With the Maestro deal, ICICI Merchant Services expects debit card use on its gateway to grow by 20% online over the next few quarters.
Debit card use is growing strongly in India, where sales volume in June increased 43%, to 25.9 billion rupees from 18.1 billion rupees a year earlier, according to the Reserve Bank of India. Transaction volume in June increased 34.4%, to 16.8 million from 12.5 million.
Indian financial institutions had issued 192 million debit cards at the end of June, up 31.1% from 146.4 million a year earlier, the central bank says.
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