The India market has witnessed a strong recovery as coronavirus fears receded and continues to remain the fastest-growing market for Visa Inc, the company said on April 27.
In a concall after announcing its financial results for the second quarter of 2022, Visa Vice Chairman and CFO Vasant Prabhu said, "India recovered strongly, up almost 20 points from December. India has been our fastest-growing market in Asia, up almost 80 percent since 2019, fueled by a tripling of e-commerce volumes."
Visa enjoys a majority market share in India's credit card market. However, the company along with rival Mastercard has been facing stiff competition from homegrown card issuer RuPay in the debit card space.
According to the latest available data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), RuPay, which is owned and operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), managed to capture a 60 percent share of India’s card market in 2020.
Also Read | Visa, Mastercard suspend operations in Russia over Ukraine invasion
RuPay's growth has been led by its inclusion in the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). The government issues only RuPay debit cards to new account holders. Besides that, more banks have adopted RuPay over the last few years.
The matter has escalated with Visa Inc ‘complaining’ to the United States government that the Indian government’s promotion of RuPay is hurting Visa’s prospects in the country.
The card issuer reported strong numbers for Q2 as travel and expenditure by customers returned to normal amid decreasing fears of the virus. The company reported a profit of $3.65 billion, as compared to $3.03 billion a year ago.
Revenues jumped by 27 percent as compared to the same quarter in the previous year, led by strong payments volumes as travel and other activities picked up.
"So far, we are not seeing any material impact on cross-border travel in other corridors as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Our 3 growth engines: consumer payments; new flows and value-added services, all grew revenues well over 20 percent," Prabhu added on the call.
