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WHAT HAPPENED RECENTLY?
Mastercard told the United States government in June that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was using nationalism to promote the use of a domestic payments network, and New Delhi’s protectionist policies were hurting foreign payment companies
THE COMPLAINT
In a written reference to Mr Modi’s stance, Mastercard told the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on June 21 that the Prime Minister “associated the use of RuPay cards with nationalism, claiming it serves as ‘kind of national service’.”
RISE OF RUPAY
Mr Modi has in recent years backed India’s homegrown payments network ‘RuPay’, whose rise has broken the dominance of U.S. payment giants such as Mastercard and Visa. More than half of India’s 1 billion debit and credit cards now go through the RuPay payment system, and that means companies such as Mastercard face an uphill task to expand rapidly in one of the world’s biggest payments growth markets.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RUPAY CARD AND VISA DEBIT CARD
- RuPay is an Indian domestic card scheme conceived and launched by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on 26 March 2012.
- RuPay is India’s own domestic network, which has been developed like international payment networks such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Dinner Club and American Express.
RUPAY – MASTERCARD
RUPAY MAKING SOLID GAINS
Data from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages the RuPay card scheme, shows that RuPay card usage at point-of-sales devices has jumped 135% to 459 million transactions in financial year 2018 against 195 million last year.