Amid UPI user surge, Visa bets on affluent consumers

MUMBAI: Visa, the world’s largest payments network, is expanding its focus in India towards affluent consumers, cross-border spending and higher-value payment services as UPI dominates everyday transactions such as groceries. The payment company is also expanding beyond interchange fees into B2B fund transfers, data consulting, cyber-resilience and AI-enabled threat detection.Visa group country manager Suresh Sethi said there is a segmentation in the digital payments market, where UPI is being used increasingly for day-to-day low-value payments while credit cards are used for other aspects of life. “We naturally also segment our markets. For us, what becomes very important is one, the entire affluent segment which is expanding as more people move from the mass-affluent segment into the affluent category,” said Sethi. The rise in overseas travel is creating another opportunity for card payments. “When you look at cross-border travel, Visa does bring the capability of global acceptance. You can virtually carry one single card with you when you’re travelling globally,” he said.Competition in premium cards is also shifting beyond traditional benefits such as airport lounge access. Foreign-exchange pricing and curated privileges are becoming more important, with zero-FX products allowing overseas transactions at the bank-rate conversion without a markup. Sethi said dynamic currency conversion has also encouraged consumers to use cards instead of prepaid forex instruments. Visa has expanded premium offerings including Infinite Privilege and Infinite Reserve.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.