Credit cards are from an era where magnetic stripes was a novelty. It is just a bunch of numbers and very lax in security.

Visa & Mastercard are just global duopolies, they have used their dominance to keep the cards easy to use but insecure. The cost of fraud is ultimately borne by the merchants, who try to pass on the hefty fee to the card holders.

India is trying to move to digital payments, a vast majority of the people are first time card holders or even account holders. Frauds do not make it easy, and we do not want to make digital payments more expensive than cash payments.

This is not a move against any card network. However, I personally think it is wrong for Visa/Mastercard to use their market dominance to charge 2-3% of every transaction. As we move more and more into a digital economy, this duopoly starts to sound like a New East India Company.