Visa targets affluent, cross-border users as India tokenisation tops 1 billion
Visa India & South Asia head Suresh Sethi says cards remain central to the affluent segment, with the company expanding tokenisation, fraud intelligence, analytics and cyber-resilience services. Visa says it contributes 55% of India’s more than 1 billion payment tokens.
What happened
Visa India & South Asia head Suresh Sethi says the network is targeting affluent and cross-border card users while expanding tokenisation, fraud intelligence,
Key facts
- Over 1 billion tokens in India
- Visa accounts for 55% of tokens as a single contributor
- Visa was among 50 companies in Project Glasswing
- Suresh Sethi took charge in April, about four months before the interview
Why this matters
Target partnerships in tokenisation, cybersecurity, fraud intelligence and cross-border commerce that deepen Visa’s role alongside—not against—India’s expanding UPI ecosystem.
What to watch
- RBI or NPCI decisions on UPI credit, card-on-UPI routing, interchange and cross-border UPI expansion.
- Launch timing, scope and payment-rail choices for Apple Pay in India.
- Issuer disclosures showing premium-card issuance, cross-border spend and tokenised transaction growth.
- Merchant data on authorization rates, checkout conversion and fraud losses after network-token adoption.
- Competitive responses from Mastercard, RuPay, domestic gateways and fintechs in tokenisation and fraud analytics.
- Travel demand, outbound tourism, overseas education flows and rupee volatility affecting cross-border card spend.
- Package tokenisation, fraud intelligence, cyber-resilience and analytics into issuer and enterprise bundles rather than sell them as standalone payment-network services.
- Prioritize premium-bank partnerships around cross-border rewards, travel corridors, overseas education, luxury retail and affluent SME spending.
- Push merchants and payment gateways to adopt network tokenisation for recurring payments, card-on-file transactions and checkout conversion optimization.
- Develop interoperability propositions linking cards, UPI and wallets while defending Visa credentials as the preferred option for international acceptance and higher-ticket commerce.
- Increase fraud-prevention investment as token proliferation shifts attacks toward account takeover, social engineering and token lifecycle vulnerabilities.