Mastercard Files Complaint Over India’s Apparent Nepotism About RuPay Network

According to a Reuters report, Mastercard the New York-based multinational financial services corporation recently formally complained to the US Government that the Government of India was purposefully promoting and encouraging domestic payments networks like RuPay, over international services like Mastercard or Visa. They alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was using the issue of nationalism to promote the Indian payment processing network. The report also states that at least half of India’s payments cards use the RuPay network, which is probably why Mastercard and Visa are not the dominant payment modes, in the country. The complaint was submitted as a note to the Office of the United States Trade Representative from Sahra English. He also serves as the company’s Vice President for Global Public Policy. The complaint reads,

“Increasing rhetoric from the prime minister and government mandates on promotion and preference for RuPay […] continues to create market access issues for U.S. payments technology companies. The Indian government’s preferential treatment of RuPay coupled with fallacies on pricing must be discontinued.”

This move, as MasterCard hopes, will encourage the US government to take some kind of action.

The Indian government, in fact, has been continuously discouraging many other sorts of external payment systems, and Mastercard or Visa are not the only victims of governmental interference or disparaging. The country had been under a lot of controversies regarding the question of cryptocurrencies, which currently is facing a ban. The operator of the Recently established Bitcoin ATM was recently arrested, and the ATM was also declared to be illegal. In India, which comprises almost a fifth of the global population, a considerable section of the people still lives under the poverty line, which is permitted, crypto assets might help alleviate. However, the possibility, as of now seems bleak.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.