The euphoria over building the next NPCI
The race is on to reshape India’s digital payments landscape. Who’s in the fray, and why?
Why read this story?
Editor's note: On 19 August, the Reserve Bank of India released its final guidelines allowing companies to apply for licences to operate payment systems. In the three weeks since, the digital payments market has gone from pandemic lockdown mode to frenzied activity. Going by accounts from multiple industry executives, several payments and financial companies have actively started exploring this new game and some are even in serious partnership talks with domestic and global players. Interest has been simmering since RBI first announced in February that it would allow the creation of new entities to manage pan-India payments networks (which we wrote about here). A quick recap, if you need it: Almost all retail payments systems in India are operated by the National Payments Corporation of India, a not-for-profit company owned by a broad consortium of banks, with a majority stake held by state-owned banks, making it indirectly a government institution. The systems operated by NPCI include the national ATM network, the RuPay card network, the Bharat Billpay platform and most prominently the Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, to name but a few. …
More in Internet
You may also like
Yes Bank’s succession problem is a board problem
As Prashant Kumar’s term runs out, boardroom fault lines have left the lender with no clarity on its next CEO—spooking investors and drawing the RBI’s ire.
PhonePe’s transition from payments to a financial services company is incomplete
The company’s IPO plans come amid weak numbers, slow growth of new platforms, challenges in its core payments business and a rather dull stock market.
Reliance’s growth engines may be losing steam
Telecom and retail, which account for half the conglomerate’s revenue and most of its valuation, aren’t accelerating fast enough to justify their price tags.
