India, April 17 -- When NPCI introduced RuPay in 2012, it marked the beginning of financial independence. India's credit card industry before the arrival of RuPay was a monopoly for foreign players such as Visa and Mastercard, which meant that a considerable portion of every transaction fee would have exited the country. But then RuPay revolutionized the sector with its domestic payment infrastructure, reducing interchange fees and bringing millions of previously underserved Indians into the formal banking system, and gave rise to a new generation of cards tailored to Indian spending habits and travel patterns.

The real change took place when RuPay became part of the UPI payments ecosystem. Users can connect their RuPay credit cards to p...