RBL Bank's credit card issuance rate to be impacted post RBI’s Mastercard ban

RBL Bank on Thursday said its credit card issuance rate will be impacted post the Reserve Bank barring Mastercard Asia Pacific from onboarding new credit, debit and prepaid card customers with effect from July 22 as it failed to comply with data storage norms.

RBL Bank, which currently issues credit cards on the Mastercard network only, said it has entered into an agreement with Visa Worldwide on Wednesday to issue credit cards enabled on the Visa payment network.

"Our bank's current run rate of approximately 1,00,000 new credit card issuances per month could potentially be impacted till such time that there is clarity from the regulator on issuing new credit cards on the Mastercard network or till the technical integration with Visa is complete," RBL Bank said in a regulatory filing.

The bank expects to start issuance of credit cards on the Visa payment network post the technology integration which is expected to take 8 to 10 weeks.

It said the company awaits further information from Mastercard on RBI's supervisory action.

"The debit and prepaid cards issued by the bank are already enabled on other payment networks in addition to the Mastercard network," RBL Bank said.

It said, as of date, it has approximately 3 million credit card customers and is the fifth largest credit card issuer in the country with approximately 5 per cent market share.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed restrictions on Wednesday on Mastercard Asia/Pacific (Mastercard) from on-boarding new domestic customers (debit, credit or prepaid) onto its card network from July 22, 2021. The supervisory action will not impact existing customers of Mastercard.