Mastercard ban to hit Citi and RBL's customer acquisition the most

In India, there were over 900 million debit cards as on May 31, 2021, of which over 400 million were issued by Mastercard

The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) ban on Mastercard is expected to hit customer acquisition of many banks, particularly those which issue credit and debit cards predominantly with Mastercard as the payment system operator, like Citi and RBL Bank. TATA Card – a co-branded credit card of SBI Cards and Tata Capital – only issues cards with Mastercard as the payment system operator.

On Wednesday, the banking regulator barred Mastercard Asia/Pacific Pte. Ltd. (Mastercard) from on-boarding new domestic customers (debit, credit or prepaid) onto its card network from July 22, 2021. The development comes after the payment system operator failed to