India's Digital Payments Strategy Sidelines Visa and Mastercard

India is strategically reducing its reliance on Western payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, leveraging its homegrown Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay. UPI's massive transaction volume and user-friendliness have made it the dominant payment method, while RuPay, with exclusive rights to process credit card transactions through UPI, is rapidly gaining market share. This strategy lowers merchant fees, boosts India's digital economy independence, and presents a significant challenge to Visa and Mastercard.