India's Payments Push is Cutting Out Visa and Mastercard (techcrunch.com) 30
India's homegrown digital payments ecosystem, anchored by two systems, is challenging Visa and Mastercard's dominance in the world's most populous nation. The backbone is UPI, a nine-year-old bank-to-bank payment network that processes over 13 billion monthly transactions through QR codes and phone numbers, accounting for 71% of all transactions and 36% of consumer spending, according to Bernstein.
RuPay, India's domestic card network, has leveraged its exclusive right to process credit card transactions through UPI to double its volume to $7.43 billion in fiscal 2025's first seven months. It now represents 28% of credit card transactions, up from 10% last year. Small merchants are adopting the system as RuPay only charges fees on transactions above $23.3. India's central bank has also mandated banks let customers choose their card network, ending exclusive deals with global providers.
RuPay, India's domestic card network, has leveraged its exclusive right to process credit card transactions through UPI to double its volume to $7.43 billion in fiscal 2025's first seven months. It now represents 28% of credit card transactions, up from 10% last year. Small merchants are adopting the system as RuPay only charges fees on transactions above $23.3. India's central bank has also mandated banks let customers choose their card network, ending exclusive deals with global providers.
Fees (Score:3)
RuPay only charges fees on transactions above $23.3.
Not sure if that got converted right - How do they make any money if most of the transactions don't incur a fee?
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How do they make any money if most of the transactions don't incur a fee?
The cost of processing any of these transactions infinitesimally small. If they charge 2% of all transactions over 2000 rupees and let's just say there are a billion transactions per month over that limit (a small percentage of the total transactions processed) and they average 3000 rupees, they are making 60 billion rupees per month (nearly 700 million USD/mo). They're doing OK.
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If they do it anything like the rest of the world, the merchants pay fees. More than enough.
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While a large majority of transactions go uncharged, there is likely enough larger transactions to fund the system to the point where it's profitable. It sounds crazy but it's a version of the American tax system where the lowest portion doesn't get taxed or gets enough of a refund that the tax no longer applies to the person yet at the same time the people in higher income brackets effectively fund the government.
Is it a good system? That's questionable. Is it a fair system? I think so.
You don't have t
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Fees above what now? (Score:1)
RuPay only charges fees on transactions above $23.3.
I'm going to give the benefit of doubt here and say that somebody wrote this rather than saying 2000 rupees because Slashdot STILL cannot handle Unicode and show the proper currency symbol, but damn, it's still laughably US-centric.
And I say that as a pretty jingoistic American.
Re:Fees above what now? (Score:4, Informative)
As a Canadian I'd say there are only 3-4 globally relevant currencies: USD, Euro, Yen, GBP.
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Sure. That's why it is customary to write something like "2000 rupees (23.3 US dollars)". But the threshold is denominated in rupees, and when the exchange rate changes by 0.3%, it wil be wrong to say the threshold is $23.3. 0.3% is less than the one-week variation shown at https://www.xe.com/currencycha... [xe.com] .
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No Renminbi?
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What about the Yuan (or however you spell the Chinese currency)
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Fair play to them (Score:2)
The fees charged by Visa & Mastercard are obscene.
Nuff said.
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Whoops.
Missed out one word: Merchant.
Sorry.
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Absolutely. No significant costs to handling cash, making cash deposits, or reconciling the accounts. Certainly no great expense to accepting checks, verifying funds, depositing them, or reconciling the accounts. And no real impact waiting for antiquated ACH to transfer funds, nor your bank to pay you. Electronic payments are instantaneous.
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That's the thing, in the UK for e.g. most payments are now contactless, so none of the above applies.
Merchants do charge a little extra, to cover the card charges, but that's OK. At least we, in the EU/UK aren't required to tip for appalling service.. :-)
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Even if I knew your username, I wouldn't care about your opinion.
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I wish I knew what a pajeet was, but I'm not down with all the skibbity rizz zoomer slang.
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I kinda wish I could buy Allen Solly in America. Not from eBay.
Can we get some of that here? (Score:4, Interesting)
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You wouldn't even be able to afford, much less be motivated to, offer kickbacks like that unless you are really turning the screws on the merchant fees side. It's nice that you can be brought around to smile on massively higher transactions costs for a handful of scrip; but that money comes from somewhere.
If you call RuPay customer service... (Score:2)
Dolla Dolla Bill, LLC (Score:2)
Big Story with Little Fanfare (Score:2)
I see this as a big story that will likely slide under the radar until it's too late. The summary should be that American processors need to get off their ass or risk losing access to 1.5 billion customers. That's just if RuPay stays confined to India. If it integrates with BRICS and works to supplant the U.S. Dollar, that would likely weaken the U.S. market share.
For everything else you'll pay with Mastercard (Score:2)
Oh, wait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]