An introduction to NPCI and its Products and Services

NPCI stands for National Payments Corporation of India. It is an umbrella corporation which a robust infrastructure for payment and settlement solutions in India. NPCI has been operational since nearly a decade but the awareness levels of the brand as a whole is not as expected.

Recently, NPCI arranged a blogger meet in collaboration with Indiblogger. The intention behind the NPCI Indimeet was to create awareness about NPCI and its various products and service among the blogging community. The bloggers would further spread this to the masses via the digital media. Thanks NPCI for warmly accommodating us at your office and enlightening us about the organisation.

History of NPCI

With the advent of digital age and the foreseen benefits of adopting it, the world started moving its service industry to zeros and ones. Financial sector was among the first industries to adopt it since they were well apprised with the potential increase in reach and ease of serviceability. World over the adoption was quick but the story in India was a quite different.

India had the financial infrastructure for paper based transaction but had to rely on a handful of foreign players for digital transactions. This attracted higher service change and limited the adoption to the “top cream” of consumers. The masses, though unintentionally, were left out. Lack of any standardization resulted in various service level issues including delays in payment processes. These delays later became standards of operation and the overall system had a lag in it.

RBI and promoting banks incorporated NPCI in the year 2008. The objective was financial inclusion of masses into this digital revolution and provide a uniform and a standard business process across all institutions. It has 10 promoting banks, including the biggies of the Indian banking like SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank etc. International banks with India presence like Citibank and HSBC are also among the promoter banks.

Major Achievements

Since it incorporation, NPCI has launched various products and solutions to unify and better the payment infrastructure. NPCI with its products and solutions could be the biggest of India contribution to the world. You could even say that Indians taught the world how to use 0 and now Indians teach them how to transact online.

The government efforts in the digital revolution have helped NPCI in launching superior products like Aadhar enabled payment system. This continues to be the flagship product of NPCI. Their other products include, Bharat interface for Money, also called as BHIM. They have a large portfolio of debit, credit, contact less and prepaid cards under the brand RuPay. Following are few of the various important offerings from NPCI.

RuPay (#FriendsOfRuPay)

Rupay is a term coined by combination of Rupee and Payment. RBI concieved this card payment system to fulfill their vision to offer a domestic, open-loop, multilateral system which will allow all Indian banks and financial institutions in India to participate in electronic payments. One of the objectives of RuPay is to assist India in moving towards “less cash” society.

Under the RuPay banner, NPCI offers cards various debit, credit, prepaid and contactless cards. These cards cater to every need and intends to involve the people from all classes of society. Depending on the card you opt for, Rupay credit cards even allow the holders, access to lounge services, 24/7 Concierge Services and comprehensive insurance. This is in addition to the various offers and schemes available on all the cards.

You can use the RuPay prepaid range of cards to surprise your loved ones or your employees during festival season, and otherwise. The RuPay Global card provides access to various services world over via the tie up with major international partners like Discoverr, Diners Club International etc.

So lets be the #FriendsOfRuPay and opt for a RuPay card with your bank.

More information on the RuPay at their microsite at www.Rupay.co.in . You can also contact them on twitter @RuPay_npci

UPI (#HighOnUPI)

UPI, or the Unified Payment Interface is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application of any participating bank. It facilitates merger of several banking features, seamless fund routing and merchant payments under one hood.

UPI supports pay request and collect request. A Pay Request is a transaction where the initiating customer is pushing funds to the intended beneficiary. A Collect Request is a transaction where the customer is pulling funds from the intended remitter.

What UPI actually did was that it nullified the inter-operability issues arising due to different service level procedures followed by different banks. Pre-UPI era, the remitter and the beneficiary needed to exchange their details which included bank account number, IFSC code, branch etc. The banks would verify the details and the transaction would only be possible after the banks authorised the beneficiary.

While using UPI, the beneficiary need to only exchange his UPI address which could be in a format as simple as nileshgonsalves@upi. UPI also allows requesting money transfer. For example, if I am supposed to receive an amount XXX from a party YYY, I would just have to know the UPI id of that party. Then I could send a payment request to yyy@upi and would receive funds immediately upon acceptance by the remitter.

Note that the UPI id varies based on where it is created. For e.g. a UPI ID created using HDFC would look like xxxxxx@hdfcbank and the one created using Axis bank would look like xxxxx@axisbank. It is required to have a mobile number linked to the account which is used for UPI transactions.

So what are you waiting for. Go ahead and get #HighOnUPI

BHIM (#BHIMKADum)

The NPCI developed the BHIM app to enable the users to make simple, easy and quick payment transactions using Unified Payments Interface (UPI). BHIM is a 24 X 7 payment solution and anyone in possession of a phone number and debit card and use it.

The unique feature of this app is that it is generic. So if you link your HDFC bank account as the primary account to this app, the app home screen will convert to the shades of HDFC bank color scheme. This will make it easier to know which account you are using for transaction.

Along with the regular Send Money and Request Money transactions, you can also transact using QR Code. Whenever you are at a POS terminal, if the merchant has a QR code, you can make payment by scanning the QR code in BHIM app. Your will now need need to confirm and enter the pin to finalise the transaction. BHIM app provides facility to block request for collect from illicit source.

This shows the true power of BHIM or we can say its the #BHIMKADum

For more information on UPI and BHIM visit their microsite at www.Bhimupi.org.in . You can also contact them on twitter @UPI_NPCI and @NPCI_BHIM .

Other Services and Products

For information on their other products and services, click on the logos below.

Conclusion

What we have seen so far is convergence of products and services like in the case of BHIM and UPI. This enables the provision of more efficient and reliable service.

With all these services and products under its umbrella, NPCI aims to facilitate transactions faster than a Pizza delivery.

For more information, visit NPCI at their website www.npci.org.in. You can also tweet them on @NPCI_NPCI

(The logos and graphics used in the post are property of NPCI. The writer intends no misuse or personal gains using these logos. We use them to increase visibility of NPCI and its products portfolio)