Top News

New features like cash withdrawals from ATMs and delegated payments for family members and friends could enable the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to eat up a larger share of the debit card market, speeding up the decline of this traditional savings account-based payment instrument, according to industry executives.
Among the popular retail payment methods, debit cards have been on a significant decline over the last few years, but now with UPI being built for all forms of retail digital payments, some of the core use cases of these cards will also be challenged.
Data from the Reserve Bank of India show that debit card swipes at merchant payments slipped to 144 million in July 2024 from 312 million two years back. This slide could only get faster, industry insiders said.
“UPI is being built as a payment network to do almost everything that consumers could do with their debit cards and the idea is to promote this homegrown payments network which can support all forms of digital payment needs of consumers,” said a senior banker with a Mumbai-based private sector lender.