NPCI Looks To Enable Blockchain-Based Digital Payments

With the digital payments industry of India expected to reach $1 Tn by 2025, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is trying to strengthen and increase the pace of the growth with the maximum adoption of new age technologies such as blockchain to make the digital payments easier and convenient.

The government-backed payments operator is now considering using highly scalable blockchain solution to further strengthen digital payments.

NPCI intends to develop a resilient, real time and highly scalable blockchain solution. In a notification, NPCI proposed to develop this solution using an open source technology/ framework/solution. To this end, the NPCI has floated an Express of Interest (EOI) in order to enable bidders to propose their capability for developing distributed ledger technology/ blockchain in the payment domain.

NPCI has invited bids for selection of Liaisoning Consultant (LC) to acquire various End-to-End Statutory permissions for Construction of Captive Data Center (CDC) in Chennai and Hyderabad.

Financial Industry has been trying to experiment with the technology by replicating existing asset transactions on the blockchain.  In infrastructure terms the blockchain is an open source software that is built to support the transfer of digital assets amongst market participants in real time.

Banks and other financial institutions are increasingly investing in the technology as it cuts down their costs and makes their operations faster and more transparent.

A survey by global consultancy firm PwC in August 2018 said India would be one of the world’s blockchain leaders by 2023. The report said that the industry leaders will have to define a proper business case for implementation after weighing in the investments made and needed, build an inclusive ecosystem for efficiencies and the rules of engagement and plan for regulatory approaches proactively.

In lieu of this development, NPCI is one of the biggest standpoints to officially involve use cases of blockchain technology in the financial industry of India. NPCI provides services like cheque clearance and facilitates digital payments and has also developed Unified Payments Interface (UPI), an instant payment system which has disrupted the Indian digital payments scenario.

[The development was reported by PTI.]