The Reserve Bank of India has been steadily reshaping the credit card market in India through a series of incremental but substantive rules over the past three years. April 2026 brought another set of clarifications and adjustments worth understanding for both card holders and merchants.

The headline change in this round relates to network choice at point of issuance. Issuers must now offer multiple network options to customers at the application stage and document the customer’s choice. The intent is to break down the de facto bilateral exclusivity arrangements between issuers and a small number of dominant networks.

In practice, the change is more incremental than the framing suggests. The big issuers are complying by offering the choice but presenting one option as the default and the others with friction. Whether the next round of rules tightens this default behaviour will determine whether actual market share shifts or whether it remains a paper change.

The merchant fee picture remains contested. The MDR for credit cards has not been formally capped in the way RuPay debit was, but the political pressure for some form of cap continues to build, especially around small merchants. The card networks have continued to argue (correctly, in my view) that the economic model of credit cards depends on interchange. Whether that argument holds politically is a separate question.

International acceptance for Indian-issued cards remains a story the bigger banks promote heavily but which travelers continue to find frustrating in practice. The acceptance gap has narrowed, but specific merchant categories overseas (some hotels, some airlines, some online services) still treat Indian-issued cards as higher friction than US or European cards. The reasons are technical and historical and largely outside RBI’s direct control.

For card customers in India in 2026, the practical takeaway is that you have more nominal choice than you did three years ago, but realising that choice still requires effort. Read the network options at application time. Check the actual rewards across networks rather than accepting the issuer’s default. The gaps between networks on travel and online spend categories remain wide enough to matter.

The next big regulatory event is likely the formal review of the credit card processing fee landscape due later in 2026. That will be the test of whether RBI is willing to set hard caps or continues to prefer disclosure-based remedies.