Plastic nationalism: Can India really shelve Visa and Mastercard for RuPay

Ater card platforms suspended Russian clients' access to merchants overseas, the link between plastic and politics has acquired a more serious dimension.

Long before the war in Ukraine, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided that international card networks could be used as instruments of statecraft — and that he should channel the rising economic power of his country’s 1.4 billion people to resist the dominance of Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and American Express Co. “Everyone cannot go to the border for the security of the nation,” Modi said in a 2018 speech. “If you develop a habit of using RuPay card … that will also become a medium to serve the nation.” 
 

Like Russia’s Mir and China UnionPay Co., RuPay is a