As many as 65 per cent of industry leaders identified credit cards as the top growth segment leading the next wave of transformation in India’s fintech and payments landscape, a report said on Wednesday. In the survey report from PwC India that surveyed 175 industry leaders who identified cards, over 90 per cent said that they believed in credit cards’ promising growth potential.
The survey revealed that 73 per cent of respondents expect Gen AI and Agentic AI to significantly impact the payments landscape. Nearly 50 per cent of the survey respondents believe that Agentic AI and biometric authentication are set to transform the user experience in digital payments.
Credit cards surpassed 100 million in FY24 and are projected to reach around 200 million by FY30 with robust transaction growth fuelled by product innovation and wider adoption, the report said. Debit cards, however, continue to decline as consumers increasingly prefer UPI and credit cards.
PwC forecasted that overall digital transaction volumes may nearly triple by FY30, driven by innovations across the ecosystem, increasing credit penetration, regulatory support, adoption of emerging technologies, and evolving consumer behaviour.
“India’s payments ecosystem is entering a new phase of maturity and integration. Over the next five years, we expect continued innovation and expansion of UPI, strong credit growth, and increasing convergence of payments with lending, insurance, and wealth. The key will be balancing innovation and scale with interoperability, security and inclusion to create a digital payments economy for the future,” said Mihir Gandhi, Partner and Leader – Payments Transformation and Fintech, PwC India
UPI accounted for 90 per cent of retail digital payment volumes in FY24–25, and its growth will be driven by offline adoption, interoperability, credit-linked use cases and emerging opportunities such as cross-border transactions.
As many as 70 per cent of respondents point to tokenisation and the RuPay–UPI linkage as key enablers, while 66 per cent viewed hyper-personalisation, easier authentication and credit on UPI as critical success factors.
