We never complained to US against RuPay: Mastercard's Porush Singh

As controversy surrounds Mastercard over complaining to the US government about India promoting RuPay, its president for South Asia Porush Singh tells Karan Choudhury and Indivjal Dhasmana that too much was read into the global payment and technology company’s report. Edited excerpts:

Are you losing out to RuPay in India?
 

If you look at a market like India, in debit cards alone, approximately $400 billion worth of transactions are in the form of taking out cash from an ATM. Frankly, no one is losing. In commercial payments, up to $500 billion transactions are done through cheques and cash. There are a lot of opportunities. 
 

Yes, there are three players that I think are good, as it increases choices for the consumers. There is a lot of hype around us  losing share. There were just 1.5 million points of sale (PoS) terminals in India till 2016 which came up in around 30 years. By this year end, there will be more than 5 million terminals. It is more about growing the pie and everyone has a role to play.

But your company did complain to the US about RuPay being promoted in India?
 

People picked up parts of it. It was not only about RuPay. It was not a complaint. We are a US-based entity and have to report various things as part of our numerous updates, which are our fiduciary responsibility. The same responsibility is also borne by us in India.

Do you think indigenous cards have an edge in the rural markets?
 

From a merchant’s point of view, they are not paying any different for this card or that card and the fee is the same for everyone. From the point of view of a consumer, they ask for a card of a bank and not of Mastercard, Visa or Rupay. The only difference is around Jan Dhan Yojana, which is one large segment but it is not the only thing. It is a big part but not all of it. In fact, it has helped create the entire distribution. So, it is complimentary to what is required in the market.

What are your investment plans like?
 

From 2014 to 2019, we have said that we will invest around Rs  70 billion, but for the future we do not have a closed number. We have started an India investment fund, not only to buy more companies but also to do partnerships. We have done a few and some have been successful. 
 

In some places, we will undertake omplete buyouts and in some companies we will buy some stake. We do not have a target about the number of companies we plan to invest in. We are looking at new age fintech firms each of which are doing something different. We want to look at technologies that will help us accelerate digital payments with an underlying promise of safety and security. As far as the number of merchants on our platform is concerned, we should close the year with around five million.

Is RuPay reducing the number of partners for you?
 

No, in fact, the number is expanding. The number of banks which are now issuing cards for Mastercard is higher than what it was three years back.

At a recent event, you said you are worried about cyber security. Why?
 

As you get into a more connected world, hackers will always attack. I am not saying India is an easy place to do it as they will attack every market. Hack attacks today are organised and the impact is global. Frauds are something which destroys consumer confidence. We invest over a billion dollars every three years on security. In a new connected world, you will constantly have more attempts.

You have still not deleted data and only given a copy of data to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Is the issue of data localisation still lingering with the RBI?
 

We have a copy of data in India and proposed a date for deletion of data. RBI is still to get back to us with a final date for deletion of data that they agree to. What people should realise is that we operate in multiple countries and no other country has asked us for deletion of data. 
 

The problem is not the copy of data but how to delete data of a particular nation in that entire data. So far as data localisation is concerned, the advantage we had was we did not have to look for servers or capacity. We used our Pune centre for copying all the data.