Google Pay enters RuPay-UPI credit card space with Axis Bank partnership

Popular UPI payments app Google Pay has launched a co-branded credit card in partnership with Axis Bank on the RuPay network, enabling users to link the card directly to their UPI accounts for merchant payments.

A key differentiator of the card is its instant rewards mechanism, which allows users to earn cashbacks or rewards in real time and redeem them on their very next transaction. This marks a clear departure from the industry norm, where rewards are typically credited at the end of a billing cycle or on a monthly basis.

“Where we have innovated is the way you can use your rewards. You earn rewards instantly on every transaction, and you can immediately use it on the very next transaction,” said Sharath Bulusu, senior director and product manager at Google.

The launch comes amid growing traction for RuPay credit cards linked to UPI, a model that combines the ubiquity of UPI payments with the credit and rewards features of traditional cards. Mastercard and Visa credit cards currently cannot be linked to UPI. Both RuPay and UPI are operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

According to Bulusu, UPI has been a key enabler for Google Pay to introduce this instant-reward redemption model, allowing rewards to seamlessly flow into subsequent payments.

The move also places Google Pay firmly in an increasingly competitive segment of India’s digital payments ecosystem. PhonePe, the country’s largest UPI player, launched its co-branded RuPay credit card with HDFC Bank in June, and followed it up with a partnership with SBI Cards a month later to offer credit cards on both Visa and RuPay networks.

Paytm, which began monetising its payments ecosystem earlier than most peers, rolled out its first co-branded credit card with Citibank in 2019, followed by a partnership with HDFC Bank in 2021, and later added SBI to its roster of banking partners. Other major UPI-linked platforms such as Cred and super.money also offer co-branded credit cards that can be connected to UPI.

Bulusu said Google Pay’s approach was not about being first to market, but about launching with features that meaningfully improve user experience.

“RuPay has been successful for other players; they've been successful for their objective. For someone, the objective might have been user growth, for someone else it might have been revenue, for someone else it might have been something else,” he said.

He added that access to formal credit remains limited in India, with only one in five customers currently eligible, making the opportunity significant for platforms that can simplify and expand credit access at scale.

Beyond instant rewards, the Google Pay–Axis Bank card also offers repayment flexibility, allowing users to convert their monthly bills into EMIs over six or nine months.

“We figured out that flexibility in repayments and simplicity in repayments matter to users, but it is hard to build, and we wanted to solve it before launching the card,” Bulusu said.

Across the industry, most payments and consumer apps offer 5–10 percent cashback or rewards for transactions conducted on their own platforms, with 3–5 percent cashback typically available on partner apps and websites. Co-branded cards generally provide 1–1.5 percent cashback on all other transactions, including UPI scan-and-pay payments.

Google Pay already offers the Ace credit card with Axis Bank on the Visa network, though the company clarified that it is not considered a co-branded card under the Reserve Bank of India’s formal definitions.

The launch underscores intensifying competition among UPI platforms to deepen monetisation while retaining the simplicity that has driven mass adoption of digital payments in India.