National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an Indian

public sector company In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociology, sociological concept of the ''Öf ...

that operates retail payments and settlement systems in India. The organization is an initiative of the

Reserve Bank of India Reserve Bank of India, abbreviated as RBI, is the central bank of the Republic of India, and regulatory body responsible for regulation of the Indian banking system and Indian rupee, Indian currency. Owned by the Ministry of Finance (India), Min ...

(RBI) and the Indian Banks' Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, for creating a robust payment and settlement infrastructure in India.

Organisation

Founded in December 2008, the NPCI is a not-for-profit organisation registered under Section 8 of the

Companies Act 2013 The Companies Act 2013 (No. 18 of 2013) is an Act of Parliament, Act of the Parliament of India which forms the primary source of Indian company law. It received presidential assent on 29 August 2013, and largely superseded the Companies Act 19 ...

, established by the

and the Indian Banks' Association. The organisation is owned by a consortium of major banks, and has been promoted by the country's central bank, the

. The NPCI was incorporated in December 2008 and the Certificate of Commencement of Business was issued in April 2009. The authorised capital has been pegged at and paid-up capital is . Initially, there were ten promoter banks viz. State Bank of Madras, Punjab National Bank,

Canara Bank Canara Bank is an Indian public sector bank based in Bangalore, India. Established in 1906 at Mangalore by Ammembal Subba Rao Pai. The bank was nationalized in 1969. Canara Bank also has offices in London, Dubai and New York. History Amm ...

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, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank,

HDFC Bank HDFC Bank Limited is an Indian banking and financial services company, headquartered in Mumbai. It is India's largest private sector bank by assets and market capitalisation. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has identified the HDFC Bank, Stat ...

Citibank Citibank, N.A. ("N. A." stands for "National bank (United States), National Association"; stylized as citibank) is the primary U.S. banking subsidiary of Citigroup, a financial services multinational corporation, multinational corporation. Ci ...

and

HSBC HSBC Holdings plc ( zh, t_hk=滙豐; initialism from its founding member The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a British universal bank and financial services group headquartered in London, England, with historical and business li ...

. In 2016, the shareholding was diluted to include 13 additional public sector banks, 15 additional private sector banks, 1 additional foreign bank, 10 multi-state co-operative banks and 7 regional rural banks. The Board consists of Biswamohan Mahapatra as the Non Executive Chairman, Nominees from the

and Nominees from ten core promoter banks. Dilip Asbe is the current managing director and chief executive officer of the NPCI after A. P. Hota, who retired from the post on 10 August 2017.

NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL)

NPCI has created a separate subsidiary to take its product to the global market. The organization is getting offers from nations around

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

to improve their payment infrastructure. Internationalization of RuPay and Unified Payment Interface (UPI) are the primary focus of the NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL). In 2021, Malaysian company Merchantrade Asia partnered with NIPL to send remittances to India through UPI infrastructure. To make it easier for UPI payments to be accepted in France, NPCI International Payments (NIPL) has teamed up with Lyra, a proximity payments and e-commerce firm based in France. Starting with the Eiffel Tower, the strategic partnership guarantees a smooth integration of the UPI payment method. NIPL and the Central Reserve Bank of Peru will collaborate to establish a quick payments infrastructure in the South American nation that is akin to UPI. A key component of this collaboration has been the Reserve Bank of India's backing. Through the agreement, the Central Reserve Bank of Peru is able to set up a fast and effective real-time payments infrastructure for the nation and individuals as well as businesses.

NPCI Bharat BillPay Limited (NBBL)

As from April 2024, NPCI created a new subsidiary for Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) to increase growth especially in business to consumer segment for small businesses. This is done in view of growing traffic and workload from UPI, IMPS, Aadhaar Enabled Payment System and National Electronic Toll Collections. NBBL is a public company registered in December 2020.

Services

The corporation's current and future service portfolio includes:

Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS)

A network of Micro ATMs using

Aadhaar Aadhaar (Hindi: आधार, ) is a twelve-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by all residents of India, based on their biometrics and demography, demographic data. The data is collected by the Unique Identification ...

authentication. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced the transactions of Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) for the month of July 2019 have crossed the milestone number of 200 million. AePS is a bank-led model which allows basic interoperable banking transactions at PoS (MicroATM) through the Business correspondent of any bank by using Aadhaar authentication. AePS had a transaction value of ₹22,350.88

crore Crore (; abbreviated cr) denotes the quantity ten million (107) and is equal to 100 lakh in the Indian numbering system. In many international contexts, the decimal quantity is formatted as 10,000,000, but when used in the context of the India ...

and a volume of 8.396 crore in January 2024.

Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS)

The Bharat Bill Payment System is a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) conceptualised system driven by the NPCI. It is a one-stop ecosystem for payment of all bills, providing an interoperable and accessible "Anytime Anywhere" bill payment service to all customers across India with certainty, reliability and safety. Bharat BillPay has multiple modes of payment and provides instant confirmation of payment via an SMS or receipt. It offers myriad bill collection categories like electricity, telecom, DTH, gas, water bills etc. through a single window. More categories may be added in the future, to include insurance premium, mutual funds, school fees, institution fees, credit cards, local taxes, invoice payments, etc. An effective mechanism for handling consumer complaints has also been put in place. Bharat BillPay transactions can be initiated through multiple payment channels like Internet, Internet Banking, Mobile, Mobile-Banking, POS (Point of Sale terminal), Mobile Wallets, MPOS (Mobile Point of Sale terminal), Kiosk, ATM, Bank Branch, Agents and Business Correspondents. Bharat BillPay supports multiple payment modes. This includes Cards (Credit, Debit and Prepaid), NEFT Internet Banking, UPI, Wallets,

based Payments and Cash.

BharatQR

A common QR code developed by NPCI in collaboration with

American Express American Express Company or Amex is an American bank holding company and multinational financial services corporation that specializes in payment card industry, payment cards. It is headquartered at 200 Vesey Street, also known as American Expr ...

, Mastercard and Visa for ease of payments and interoperability.

BHIM

BHIM BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is an Indian state-owned mobile payment app developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Launched on 30 December 2016, it is intended to fa ...

is a

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

to act as Client software for the

Unified Payments Interface Unified Payments Interface, commonly known as UPI is an Indian instant payment system as well as protocol developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2016. The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and pe ...

BHIM Aadhaar Pay

BHIM Aadhaar pay is an

based payments interface which allows real time payments to Merchants using Aadhaar number of Customer & authenticating them through their biometrics.

Cheque Truncation System (CTS)

CTS is based on a

cheque truncation Cheque truncation (check truncation in American English) is a cheque clearance system that involves the digitization of a physical paper cheque into a substitute electronic form for transmission to the paying bank. The process of cheque cleara ...

or online image-based cheque clearing system where cheque images and

magnetic ink character recognition Magnetic ink character recognition code, known in short as MICR code, is a character recognition technology used mainly by the banking industry to streamline the processing and clearance of cheques and other documents. MICR encoding, called the ...

(MICR) data are captured at the collecting bank branch and transmitted electronically.

Digital Rupee

The Digital Rupee (e₹) or eINR or E-Rupee is a tokenised digital version of the Indian Rupee, to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The Digital Rupee was proposed in January 2017 and will be launched in the 2022-23 financial year. The plan is to incorporate distributed ledger into Digital Rupee. Like banknotes it will be uniquely identifiable and regulated by Central Bank. Liability lies with RBI. Plans include online and offline accessibility. RBI will launch Digital Rupee for Wholesale (e₹-W) catering to financial institutions for interbank settlements and Digital Rupee for Retail (e₹-R) for consumer and business transactions. CBDC will remove ₹4,984.80 crore security printing cost borne by the general public, businesses, banks, and RBI on physical currency.

Immediate Payment Service (IMPS)

Immediate Payment Service is a real time inter bank payment system. *Mobile number & MMID: Send money to bank accounts mapped using mobile number. *Account number & IFSC: Send money to bank accounts.

National Automated Clearing House

A centralised clearing service that aims at providing interbank high volume, low value transactions that are repetitive and periodic in nature.

National Common Mobility Card - Rupay Contactless

Rupay Contactless is a

contactless payment Contactless payment systems are credit cards and debit cards, key fobs, smart cards, or other devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices, that use radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near-field communication (NFC) for making sec ...

technology that allows cardholders to wave their card in front of contactless payment terminals without the need to physically swipe or insert the card into a point-of-sale device.

National Electronic Toll Collection

FASTag is a device that employs Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for making toll payments directly while the vehicle is in motion. FASTag (RFID Tag) is affixed on the windscreen of the vehicle and enables a customer to make the toll payments directly from the account which is linked to FASTag. The latest version 2.0 can also be used to buy fuel. IDFC First Bank has become the first one to get an approval from the RBI. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has declared that all lanes at all toll plazas on national highways across the country will be dedicated Fastag lanes from 1 December 2019.

National Financial Switch

Network of shared

automated teller machine An automated teller machine (ATM) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers, balance inquiries or account ...

s in India.

RuPay

RuPay is a domestic card scheme of India. The card has Magnetic stripe (for

Backward compatibility In telecommunications and computing, backward compatibility (or backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, software, real-world product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with Input ...

) and an

EMV EMV is a payment method based on a technical standard for smart card, smart payment cards and for payment terminals and automated teller machines which can accept them. EMV stands for "Europay International, Europay, Mastercard, and Visa Inc., ...

chip. RuPay cards are now accepted at all ATMs,

Point-of-Sale terminal A payment terminal, also known as a point of sale (POS) terminal, credit card machine, card reader, PIN pad, EFTPOS terminal (or by the older term as PDQ terminal which stands for "Process Data Quickly"), is a device which interfaces with paym ...

s and most online merchants in the country. More than 300 cooperative banks and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) in the country have also issued RuPay ATM cards.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI)

is a real-time interbank payment system for sending or receiving money. It is integrated with more than 358 banks in India. Consumers can participate in P2P transfer as long as they both have an account in one of the registered banks. To initiate fund transfer, users have to use any UPI supporting Android or iOS app, link their bank accounts and generate BHIM UPI PIN. Funds can be transferred via the following methods: *Virtual Payment Address (VPA): Send or request money from/to bank account mapped using VPA. *Account number & IFSC: Send money to bank account. *QR code: Send money by scanning QR code with enclosed VPA or Account number & IFSC. *Mobile number: Send or request money from/to the bank account mapped using mobile number. *Aadhaar: Send money to the bank account mapped using Aadhaar number. Once the fund transfer is initiated, money is debited from payer's bank account and deposited in the recipient's bank account in real-time. This system works 24x7, including weekends and bank holidays. Project Nexus The

Bank for International Settlements The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an international financial institution which is owned by member central banks. Its primary goal is to foster international monetary and financial cooperation while serving as a bank for central bank ...

signed an agreement with Central Bank of Malaysia,

Bank of Thailand The Bank of Thailand (BOT; Abbreviation, abbr. ธปท.; , ) is the central bank of Thailand. History The Bank of Thailand (BOT) was first set up as the Thai National Banking Bureau. The Bank of Thailand Act was promulgated on 28 April 1942 ...

, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas,

Monetary Authority of Singapore The Monetary Authority of Singapore or (MAS), is the central bank and financial regulatory authority of Singapore. It administers the various statutes pertaining to money, banking, insurance, securities and the financial sector in general, as ...

, and the

on 30 June 2024 as founding member of Project Nexus, a multilateral international initiative to enable retail cross-border payments. Bank Indonesia involved as a special observer. The platform, which is expected to go live by 2026, will interlink domestic fast payment systems of the member countries.

*99# USSD

USSD Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), sometimes referred to as "quick codes" or "feature codes", is a communications protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the mobile network operator's computers. USSD can be used ...

channel service for UPI mobile banking launched in November 2012. Only public sector telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited BSNL and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited MTNL are offering this service. It uses quick codes for transactions and doesn't require smartphone and access to internet. The interface is developed by National Unified USSD Platform (NUUP) to overcome the problem of poor internet connectivity in rural areas with 12 regional languages. This service is being currently offered by 51 banks.

app also supports USSD features. Understanding the importance of mobile banking in financial inclusion in general and of *99# in particular, various regulatory/trade bodies came together to ensure on boarding of all TSPs on *99# (USSD 1.0). With the wider ecosystem (11 TSPs), *99# was launched by Prime minister

Narendra Modi Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950) is an Indian politician who has served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India since 2014. Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 and is the Member of Par ...

on 28 August 2014, as part of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna.

UPI 123PAY

It a 3-step method to initiate and execute UPI services for feature phone users without the use of internet connection or

channel. It is based on Interactive voice response (IVR) technology which is good specially for rural and urban areas. It is launched by RBI on 10 March 2022.

Digital Payments Score

A Digital Payments Score (DPS) will be developed by NPCI with the intention of bolstering the nation's credit scoring system and fostering increased productivity and expansion. When determining criteria, DPS may consider things like a person's financial stability, which includes timely payments, regular bill payments, and whether or not the person regularly transacts for high-value commodities and has the income to support them.

Recent awards and recognition

* The NPCI was awarded Golden Peacock Innovative Product/Service Award for the year 2018 for BHIM UPI. * The NPCI won Policy Change Agent of the Year 2018 by '' Economics Times''.

References

External links

Official site
{{Digital payment providers 2008 establishments in Maharashtra Financial services companies established in 2008 Payment systems organizations Interbank networks in India Non-profit organisations based in India Banking in India Financial services companies based in Mumbai Financial services companies of India