HDFC RuPay credit card holders can now link their cards with UPI, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and HDFC Bank announced in a press release issued on February 16. In June 2022, India's central bank announced that UPI will support credit cards for merchant payments (not for sending money to other people) starting with RuPay branded cards. Since then, public sector banks like Punjab National Bank (PNB), Indian Bank, and Union Bank of India, have started issuing UPI-supported RuPay credit cards. HDFC Bank is the first private sector bank to support this feature. Why does this matter: With the extension of the popular UPI payment method to credit cards, consumers and merchants have more options to work with. Consumers get access to a credit line for UPI payments (previously they could only use funds available in their bank account) and merchants get to accept credit card payments without having to install and pay for expensive machines. Furthermore, since RuPay is the only card network that supports this feature currently, it will probably help it gain market share in a market that is dominated by Visa and Mastercard (much to their dislike). "We believe linking RuPay Credit Card on UPI to be a game-changer for the ecosystem and will give impetus to the adoption of UPI across businesses with multiple use cases. It will provide a seamless, digitally enabled credit card lifecycle experience to the customers and will enable consumers to make QR-based, e-commerce payments using the credit card on UPI which…
