Mastercard ban: RBL Bank restarts credit card issuances with rival Visa

Two months after getting hit by the regulatory ban on Mastercard, private sector lender RBL Bank on September 15 restarted credit card issuances on rival Visa’s payment network.

The Reserve Bank of India had banned Mastercard from issuing any new cards on July 14 this year for not complying with data localisation requirements. The move had hit a slew of lenders, including RBL Bank, which was fully dependent on the American payment company for its credit card business.

RBL Bank said it signed up with Visa on July 14 itself, and the technology integration was achieved in record time to restart new issuances.

Its head for retail business thanked Visa and technology partner Fiserv, and exuded confidence of meeting its target of issuing 12-14 lakh credit cards in FY22.

Visa’s head of business development for India Sujai Raina said the company aims to enable digital payments and help customers avail credit offerings from issuers with ease.

Credit cards contribute 37.5% of the retail book for the lender, which has a 5% market share in the segment. Its credit card book had grown 17% to ₹12,039 crore as of June, and had 30.69 lakh cards outstanding as of July.

The bank in its guidance had said that by mid-September, it will restart issuances and hoped to do 1 lakh cards a month on average.

The RBL Bank scrip was trading 2.42% up at ₹179.60 a piece on the BSE at 1252 hrs, as against gains of 0.59% on the benchmark.