Mastercard is teaming up with mobile payments firm Obopay to introduce a prepaid card for corporates in India.
Economic Times of India reported Monday (Dec. 10) that Mastercard, Obopay and Federal Bank are collaborating on the prepaid card solution that enables corporate managers to gain greater control of their payments and expenses. The firms said the tool aims to address a range of scenarios, including expenses while employees are traveling, or linking cards to bank accounts to receive salaries.
"We are joining hands with Mastercard and Federal Bank for promoting digitization and creating a robust digital payments solution which will provide end users with the highest level of convenience," said Obopay Chief Executive Officer Shailendra Naidu in a statement. "Obopay will play a vital role in facilitating the program management and customer lifecycle management for the end-users."
The prepaid card solution will not include service charges or minimum balance requirements, reports said, and will provide support for integration with mobile wallets, while enabling ATM withdrawals, inter-card fund transfers and split transaction features.
Its collaboration with Mastercard follows Obopay's recent acquisition of mobile app firm Mubble, which will bolster Obopay's mobile app and analytics capabilities, reports in VCCircle said in September.
Mastercard, meanwhile, has been strengthening its position in India's corporate prepaid market for years. In 2016 the company announced a collaboration with the State Bank of India to roll out a prepaid commercial card in the country targeted at business travelers.
More recently, however, the company became the subject of scrutiny by the nation's central bank, the Reserve Bank of India. Mastercard, along with American Express, Visa, Amazon, PayPal and others, have requested more time to comply with updated data collection and privacy rules, which require storage of data within India borders.
Reports in October said the RBI threatened to take action against companies if they missed the deadline. U.S. policymakers subsequently sent a letter to India Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging leniency on the companies to prevent any disruptions to trade.
