> A lot of folks don’t know that merchants pay more for CNP transactions. Why? Well it’s simple, there is no alternative to cards for an online transaction, the

> A lot of folks don’t know that merchants pay more for CNP transactions. Why? Well it’s simple, there is no alternative to cards for an online transaction, the issuers have power. That may be true in many countries, but in India, there are cardless (non-credit/non-debit card) online payments available that are used a lot more than card based payments and are all instantaneous (similar to cards): * Netbanking (where you're redirected to your bank's site and login to approve a specific payment) * UPI (Unified Payment Interface), a private consortium [1] managed payment system where anyone can create a user@paymentprovider ID and exchange that as the receiver address instead of complex bank account numbers, branch details, etc. This also allows payment requests from merchants that one can login and approve. * IMPS (Immediate Payment System), another service by the same private consortium. [1] * Rupay cards, a local payment network (now recognized in a few other countries) by the same private consortium [1] that's a replacement for Mastercard/Visa/Amex networks. * Digital wallets by payment providers and "payment banks" that work like wallets and/or allow direct transfers from one's linked bank account, like Paytm, Amazon Pay, Amazon Pay UPI, Google Pay, PhonePe, and many, many more. * Bank transfers that may take an hour or several minutes, as opposed to the instantaneous ones above, with systems like NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer, a batched inter-bank payments settlement system) and RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement, a real time inter-bank settlement system). Though digital payments are still not huge in percentage terms, the ones above likely handle a lot more volume than Visa and Mastercard do. The government has also pushed for zero MDR (Merchant Discount Rate) on certain payment and transfer options, and made them more attractive to merchants. The U.S. is comparatively very backward in payment systems, costs and payment speeds. [1]: The private consortium is called NPCI, which stands for National Payments Corporation of India.