Mastercard, Visa losing market share to RuPay, UPI: FM

Days after Mastercard complained to the US government against India's “protectionist policies”, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said global payment processors were losing market share to domestic players such as RuPay.

“Today Visa and Mastercard are losing market share in India to the indigenously developed payment system of UPI and RuPay Card, whose share has reached 65 per cent of the payments done through debit and credit cards,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often pitched for use of RuPay payments system, arguing that it contributed to the task of nation-building.

Jaitley, in his article defending the Modi government's demonetisation decision, said the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) transactions has grown from Rs 0.5 million in October 2016 to Rs 598 billion in September 2018.

“The Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) is an App developed by NPCI for quick payment transactions using UPI. It is currently used by 1.25 Crore people,” Jaitley said adding that the value of BHIM transactions has increased from Rs. 0.02 billion in September 2016 to Rs. 70.6 billion in September 2018.

The share of BHIM transactions in overall UPI transactions is at about 48% in June 2017, Jaitley said.

The RuPay card transactions have increased from Rs. 8 billion before demonetisation to Rs. 57.3 billion in September 2018 for Point of Sale transactions and from Rs 3 billion to Rs. 27 billion in e-commerce.

Last week, Mastercard had complained to the Office of the US Trade Representative that Modi used the nationalism pitch to promote indigenous payments systems which were hurting the businesses of private companies.