This highlights the huge market that exists for electronic payments. In India, the electronic payment industry is controlled by three entities, namely, MasterCard, Visa and Rupay. Visa and MasterCard are electronic payment companies which are foreign while Rupay is an Indian company. VISA and MasterCard are electronic payment giants having their footprint in almost every country across the globe. It must be borne in mind that VISA and MasterCard are only electronic payment entities, and are in no way responsible either for issuing credit cards or in the business of lending money. They only provide the interface for processing of electronic transactions. However, both these companies have co-branding relationship with banks and other financial institutes such as NBFC and the same can be seen on the debit card or the credit card issued by that bank. Although, as stated before, these companies do not lend credit, but they offer a broad range of benefits such as lounge access, discounts on transactions, usable reward points, waver in certain surcharges etc for their debit or credit card options.
For a developing economy of India, it is a known fact that it still has a low electronic payment penetration as compared to economies like China and USA. Therefore, VISA and MasterCard have been eyeing India with extensive plans of expanding their operations to tap into the huge market potential. They do so by tying up with banks etc and offering benefits such as rewards and cashbacks to lure people.
Visa and MasterCard (both publicly traded companies) are the solitary network disbursement processors who are involved in all spaces of the payments market. They work solely as network processors but both these companies operate in a similar manner. However, the differences lie in the benefits provides by these companies.
VISA generated revenue of $ 21.8 billion in 2020 while MasterCard generated $15.3 billion. Both these companies’ business segment includes service, data processing, international transactions, etc. Both Visa and Mastercard get the bulk of their income from service and data processing fees, but both portray these fees differently and have their own fee configurations. Service fees and Data processing fees are charged to the issuer and is based on card volume. The issuer retrieves the same from merchants. MasterCard offers price protection benefits, concierge services across its elites’ cards and it has a noteworthy world hotels and resorts programs, offering multiple benefits. VISA is known for its lost luggage benefits and Signature world hotel offerings. On entry level cards, the benefits offered by both these companies are very similar such as rewards program, lounge access, unauthorized charges protection, interactional benefits etc. In case of any sort of queries related to finance or insurance, you can always try to connect with us. Our experts are here to provide you with the right solutions
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