National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is most likely to mull blockchain in a bid to strengthen digital payments.
Blockchain technology is a constantly growing list of encrypted transactions called blocks. A block may include any type of data namely unique digital identifiers of physical products.
The NPCI is an umbrella organisation supervising all the retail payments in India. It was set up under the complete guidance and support of the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks Association (IBA).
“NPCI intends to develop a resilient, real time and highly scalable blockchain solution. It is proposed to develop this solution using an open source technology/ framework/solution,” said NPCI in its official communiqué.
NPCI has also circulated an Express of Interest (EOI) in a bid to enable bidders to suggest their ability for developing distributed ledger technology/ blockchain in the payment domain.
NPCI has also welcomed bids for selection of Liaisoning Consultant (LC) for acquiring various End-to-End Statutory permissions for Construction of Captive Data Center (CDC) in Chennai and Hyderabad.
NPCI offers services like cheque clearance and also facilitates digital payments. It developed the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), an instant payment system. According to the official figures, UPI transaction reached Rs 1.33 lakh crore in March 2019 from Rs 3.1 crore in August 2016.
