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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteNot literally. India’s UPI system and domestic RuPay card scheme are competing with Visa and Mastercard in some domestic transactions, but the available figures do not show that either international network has been eliminated. UPI’s large share of retail digital-payment transactions is not a measure of Visa’s or Mastercard’s share of card payments.
What UPI and RuPay do—and how they differ
UPI and RuPay are related parts of India’s payment system, but they are not two names for the same product. The distinction matters when interpreting claims that one is replacing the other—or replacing international card networks.
| System | What it is | Typical role |
|---|---|---|
| UPI | An instant-payment rail and interface operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). | Enables payments through participating banks and apps, including many domestic QR and account-based payments. Eligible RuPay credit cards can also be linked to UPI. |
| RuPay | A domestic card scheme operated by NPCI. | Provides a card-network option for card purchases; eligible RuPay credit cards can also be used through UPI. |
| Visa and Mastercard | International card networks. | Route card payments where the relevant card and merchant are supported. They are not the same kind of infrastructure as UPI. |
The Government of India describes UPI as operated by NPCI and authorised under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. That institutional arrangement does not make UPI a card network: it is a different way to initiate and route payments.
What the numbers show
India’s figures demonstrate the scale of its domestic digital-payment infrastructure. They measure different things, however, and cannot be combined into a direct Visa-versus-Mastercard market-share comparison.
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UPI’s share of retail digital payments
In a 16 March 2026 release, the Ministry of Finance said UPI accounted for 81% of total retail digital-payment transactions in FY 2024–25. That is a share of retail digital-payment transaction count—not a share of card transactions, card value, or payments overall. The release also called UPI the world’s largest real-time retail payment system.
UPI users and transactions
A separate Ministry of Finance release, dated 20 July 2026, reported 55.49 crore users onboarded as of June 2026. It reported 24,162 crore UPI transactions worth ₹314 lakh crore in FY 2025–26. These are government-reported figures for the stated periods; the user count is not a measure of active monthly users, and the transaction totals do not identify which card networks gained or lost transactions.
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RuPay’s share of outstanding credit cards
The Reserve Bank of India’s Annual Report 2023–24 reported that RuPay’s share of outstanding credit cards in circulation rose from 3% in FY 2022–23 to 10% in FY 2023–24, in the context of RuPay credit cards being linked to UPI. This is a card-circulation measure, not RuPay’s share of card purchases or the share of payments made over UPI.
The wider shift to digital retail payments
The same RBI annual report said digital retail transactions’ share of the total value of retail payments increased from 1.3% in FY 2005–06 to 90.9% in FY 2023–24. This long-term measure covers the broad digital-payment shift; it does not quantify Visa’s or Mastercard’s share.
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Why UPI puts pressure on card networks in India
For a participating merchant and customer, an account-based UPI payment can provide an alternative to paying with a conventional card. QR acceptance and app-based payment initiation make that option practical for many everyday domestic purchases. When a customer chooses UPI instead of a Visa or Mastercard card, that particular transaction does not need to follow the usual card-purchase path.
RuPay credit-card linkage adds another kind of competition. It lets eligible RuPay credit cards reach merchants through UPI acceptance, combining a credit product with a payment experience commonly used for account-based payments. The RBI’s reported increase in RuPay’s share of outstanding cards is consistent with that domestic expansion, but does not establish a corresponding fall in Visa’s or Mastercard’s transaction share.
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For an individual, the payment method also affects the funding source. A bank-account UPI payment draws on an account, while a linked eligible RuPay credit card uses credit. UPI is therefore not automatically a substitute for borrowing on a credit card: the funding method depends on how the payment is set up and which options the bank, app, card and merchant support.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the evidence does not establish about Visa and Mastercard
The official figures cited here do not provide a current, directly comparable breakdown of Visa’s and Mastercard’s individual shares of Indian domestic card transactions, whether measured by count or value. UPI’s 81% share of retail digital-payment transactions and RuPay’s 10% share of outstanding credit cards have different denominators and cannot fill that gap.
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So “cutting out” is defensible only as shorthand for competition and substitution in some use cases. The reported figures do not show that Visa or Mastercard has been removed from India, nor do they show that Indian customers can no longer use their cards. A claim about a network’s current card share would require a matching measure—same geography, period, and denominator—for the card networks being compared.
International expansion is a separate part of the strategy
India’s policy agenda also aims to take domestic payment infrastructure beyond India, but international links should not be mistaken for universal overseas acceptance. The RBI’s Payments Vision 2025 set out five policy anchors: Integrity, Inclusion, Innovation, Institutionalisation and Internationalisation. The government has described NPCI International Payments Limited, a wholly owned NPCI subsidiary, as partnering with foreign entities to extend UPI and RuPay overseas and support similar payment infrastructure.
NPCI’s UPI for NRIs feature is eligibility-specific. Cross-border connections and partnerships can make UPI available in particular circumstances, but the existence of a feature or partnership does not mean every user can pay with UPI in every country or at every merchant. News On AIR’s 27 March 2026 report on the RBI’s Payments Vision 2028 announcement described further work on cross-border payment efficiency and review of the cross-border payments ecosystem, with roadmap work through December 2028. That policy direction is not evidence of global parity with Visa or Mastercard.
What this means if you are choosing how to pay
- For a domestic QR or app payment: UPI may offer a convenient account-based alternative where your bank or app and the merchant support it.
- If you want to use credit through UPI: check whether your card is an eligible RuPay credit card and whether the app and merchant support that payment. A UPI QR code alone does not guarantee credit-card funding.
- For card payments: acceptance depends on the merchant, card and payment channel. The UPI growth figures do not establish that Visa or Mastercard cards have stopped working in India.
- For overseas payments: check availability for your specific bank, app, user eligibility, country and merchant. Do not assume a domestic UPI setup works everywhere abroad.
The Ministry of Finance’s release dates, the RBI’s fiscal-year measures and NPCI’s monthly statistics serve different purposes. For a current month-specific UPI count or value, use NPCI’s official product-statistics page and retain its stated reporting month and units; do not compare those figures directly with card-circulation data.
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