UPI driving digital shift in India, but is not a money maker: Mastercard CFO
Mastercard, the world's second-largest payments network, said India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is a loss-making proposition for the players in the ecosystem even as it driving digitisation in the country.
«UPI is fantastic at many levels in terms of what it has done to create digitisation in the economy. It is an incredibly painful experience for ecosystem participants, who all end up losing money as part of that proposition.
We continue to see good growth on our debit and credit proposition, and we see there to be a lot of potential on a going-forward basis there,» Sachin Mehra, chief financial officer at Mastercard, told investors at the UBS Fintech Leaders Conference.
UPI, introduced in 2016, has been a game changer in the payments ecosystem in India, easing payments and transfers and playing a key role in digital adoption in the country. In June, UPI transactions grew 46% compared to 26% for credit card spends and a 9% decline in spends on debit cards.
Mastercard said India continues to be a very important market and it will continue to compete despite the challenge.
«We want to compete, where we can do so while actually making sure that the ecosystem makes money. India is a little challenged in that regard when you have the likes of UPI,» said Mehra.
Earlier this week, Mastercard named former State Bank of India chair Rajnish Kumar as the chairman of its Indian business.
Last month, UPI recorded more than 10 billion transactions for about ₹15,18,456 crore, according to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
