MasterCard Calls for a level playing field in Indian market

KOLKATA: Facing stiff competition from India's own payment gateway RuPay, MasterCard has called for a level playing field to stay put in the Indian market.
"It is great that the government is opening up the market… But the market should be driven by competition rather than mandate-driven competition," said Ravinder S Aurora, MasterCard's group head and senior vice president.

RuPay, which is run by the National Payments Corporation of India, gained traction in the local market ever since banks started opening accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. About 154 million RuPay cards have been issued to new non-frills account holders under the PMJDY programme, to add to the 40 million existing RuPay debit cards with regular bank customers.

RuPay, which was conceptualised by Reserve Bank of India in 2009, has cornered about one-third of the market with a size of 580 million. China has a similar indigenous card called the Union Pay of China.

To thwart competition, Aurora said that MasterCard is focusing on innovation and advanced technology for better security features. Not too long ago, MasterCard and Visa Card were predominant in the Indian market, which is now almost equally shared by RuPay and the two global payment solution providers in terms of number of cards issued.

Bankers said that issuing RuPay cards is cost effective for them as the fees associated with it is typically lower than the charges levied by Visa or MasterCard.

Aurora said that about 10% of MasterCard's global business comes from India. It had invested $250 million in India last year. " It has tied up with E-lala, the e-commerce portal being promoted by Confederation of All India Traders, to promote use of credit card among traders.