NPCI seeks bids from agencies for rewards programme

In what could mark its maiden foray into the rewards and cashbacks game, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Wednesday put out a request for proposal (RFP) for empanelment of an agency to offer rewards and loyalty programmes on behalf of the institution.

So far, users of NPCI’s RuPay cards and Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app have not got access to the range of rewards and freebees offered by most other consumer payments players — a key reason for BHIM ceding market share to the likes of Google Tez and Paytm in recent months.

Slipping from a 45% share in Unified Payments Interface (UPI) volumes till August, BHIM now accounts for roughly 6% of all UPI transactions.

The tender document, available on NPCI’s website, states, “The bidder should be able to source merchant funded offers in several categories and should be maintained properly with validity date, terms and conditions, eligibility, brand locations, offers management, contracts etc.”
It also provides an indicative list of categories, which include apparel and accessories, travel, telecom, bill payments, hotels and fuel.

Bidders should be able to source merchant-funded offers in different categories, the document says, and should be maintained properly with validity date, terms and conditions, eligibility, brand locations, offers management and contracts. They should also provide insights on offers enhancement as per market trends and upcoming brands and source offers as per the analysis.

The agency will, in addition, have to develop an interactive rewards platform for listing of merchandise, gift cards and experiences.

The platform developed should be able to customise as per the requirements of the NPCI and member banks. It should, in addition, allow NPCI or member banks to do campaign management, including selecting target segments, creating communication copy and deploying communications via push notifications.

An email sent to NPCI seeking confirmation about the empanelment of an agency for rewards and loyalty went unanswered till the time of going to press.