Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

After years of playing will-they-won’t-they with India’s non-banks, the RBI may finally be warming up to NBFC credit cards. But Arundhati writes that most NBFCs may not be that keen at the chance. Also today, Anand continues his series on how to accumulate a big retirement corpus—and why risk tolerance and asset allocation are critical pieces of the puzzle.

RBI dangles the credit card carrot again, but who will bite?

India’s banking regulator can be such a tease.

Last week, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued new directions on how financial institutions can issue credit and debit cards, triggering debates on whether non-banking financial companies (NBFC) will finally be allowed to issue credit cards. (I’d written about some of the possibilities in Ka-Ching! earlier. Facebook credit cards, anyone?)

But here is the thing. That’s been the case for nearly two decades now, at least on paper. Since 2004, the RBI has told non-banks in many periodic circulars that they could launch credit cards—they just had to take its permission first.