Comment by bahularora

What I find interesting is how India’s financial inclusion push under the Jan Dhan Yojana (National Financial Inclusion Mission) led to unexpected consequences.

The government aimed to offer zero-cost bank accounts to extremely low-income citizens and needed zero cost debit cards to make them functional. Rumor has it they asked Visa and Mastercard to waive fees and both declined. Even Indian banks reportedly pushed back.

So India doubled down on RuPay, its domestic card network. What started as a fallback turned into a fintech revolution. Over 559 million bank accounts were opened under this mission, most powered by RuPay.

Ironically, if Visa or Mastercard had agreed, RuPay might never have taken off.