The number of credit cards in India are rising at a fast pace and linking them with UPI will give a significant boost to the digital payments platform. The RBI had announced its proposal to allow the linking of credit cards on UPI platforms. Experts said that in the long run, credit on UPI has the potential to disrupt all other scheme providers, including Visa and MasterCard.
With over 20 million QRs available for UPI transactions, the same technology will be used for credit card transactions, which will also increase acceptance in Tier-2 and -3 cities.
Credit Cards
The number of credit cards outstanding in India jumped 22 per cent year-on-year in August 2022. The total number of outstanding credit cards in the system stood at about 7.80 crore at the end of August 2022, a significant 21.9 per cent jump as compared with 6.40 crore in August 2021, according to the RBI data.
UPI
The UPI payments are also rising at a fast pace. In July, the platform crossed 6 billion transactions, the highest since 2016. It has more than 26 crore unique users and 5 crore merchants. According to an ICRA report, the UPI-based payment throughput more than doubled to Rs 84.16 lakh crore in FY2022 from Rs 41.04 lakh crore in FY2021.
Physical Cards
As per the survey – Physical cards will see a reduction in issuance and usage. Customers will prefer using credit card on UPI as against swiping it. The physical layer of the card management industry will have an impact with a volume decrease. With RuPay cards being the first to be onboarded, this could mean a substantial shift of volumes in favour of RuPay.
In the long run, credit on UPI has the potential to disrupt all other scheme providers, including Visa and MasterCard. The cost of credit card payment may also come down as the UPI infrastructure is more optimised compared to other payment networks.”