Feb 06 2015 : The Economic Times (Delhi)
Cashless Ecosystem on India's Agenda
Jayadevan PK & Richa Maheshwari
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Bengaluru:
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National Payment Corp is building single interface platform for payment mechanisms
Apple Pay may not be launching in India any time soon, but India is planning a major push to unify different payment mechanisms to create a cashless ecosystem in the country .The National Payment Corporation of India, an organisation for all retail payments supported by India's largest banks, is building a single interface platform for all transactions. The umbrella organisation wants to create a unified backbone and a set of application programming interfaces for others to build payment solutions on, according to a draft proposal it released on Thursday .
“It's taking an interoperable platform approach to where Apple Pay went in a proprietary way ,“ said Pramod Varma, chief architect at the Unique Identification Authority of India.
The idea is to build a software layer over existing payment systems like credit or debit cards, electronic payments over banking platforms and mobile payment systems that third-party service providers can plug in and enable peer-to -peer transactions between virtual account holders.
“We are already connected to most banks in India and now we are talking about creating agility in payment systems,“ said N Rajendran, CTO, NPCI.
Users will be able to initiate transactions using smartphones, transfer money to virtualised accounts without having to remember account numbers or passwords. This platform will bring together financial institutions, merchants and other payment enablers like wallets and gateways.
If things go as planned, the NPCI is likely to run a pilot by mid 2015.
“The goal is noble but I'm not sure how efficient it is going to be if one entity is going to control the whole ecosystem,“ said a payment company executive, who requested anonymity .
“It's taking an interoperable platform approach to where Apple Pay went in a proprietary way ,“ said Pramod Varma, chief architect at the Unique Identification Authority of India.
The idea is to build a software layer over existing payment systems like credit or debit cards, electronic payments over banking platforms and mobile payment systems that third-party service providers can plug in and enable peer-to -peer transactions between virtual account holders.
“We are already connected to most banks in India and now we are talking about creating agility in payment systems,“ said N Rajendran, CTO, NPCI.
Users will be able to initiate transactions using smartphones, transfer money to virtualised accounts without having to remember account numbers or passwords. This platform will bring together financial institutions, merchants and other payment enablers like wallets and gateways.
If things go as planned, the NPCI is likely to run a pilot by mid 2015.
“The goal is noble but I'm not sure how efficient it is going to be if one entity is going to control the whole ecosystem,“ said a payment company executive, who requested anonymity .
