In News:
- The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has extended the deadline for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to meet the market cap deadline of 30% to December 31, 2024.
- The earlier deadline to meet the market cap norms was December 31, 2022.
What’s in today’s article:
- National Payments Corporation of India (About, Products)
- Unified Payment System - about, features, benefits, transaction statistics
- News Summary
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
- NPCI is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.
- It is an initiative of RBI and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
- The objective of NPCI is to create a robust Payment & Settlement Infrastructure in India.
- For this, NPCI was incorporated as a “Not for Profit” Company.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI)
- UPI is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank).
- It does so by merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one hood.
- In other words, UPI is an interface via which one can transfer money between bank accounts across a single window.
- It was launched in 2016, by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
Features
- Immediate money transfer through mobile device round the clock 24*7 and 365 days
- Single mobile application for accessing different bank accounts
- Hassle free transactions as customers are not required to enter the details such as Card no, Account number, IFSC etc.
Benefits
- For Banks
- A universal application for recording transactions;
- A single click Two Factor authentication;
- Safer and more secure; Enables easy transactions;
- Unique Identifier
- For Merchants
- Easier fund collection; In-App Payments (IAP)
- No risk of storing the customer's virtual address;
- Tap customers not having credit/debit cards
- For Customers
- Single application for accessing various bank accounts;
- Round the clock availability;
- One can easily raise a complaint from the mobile app directly;
- Use of Virtual ID is secure
UPI Transaction: Statistics
- As of November 2022, the unified payment interface (UPI) transactions included:
- of Banks live on UPI - 373
- Volume of transaction - 7,309.45 million
- Value of total transaction - 11,90,593.39 Cr.
Background:
- In November 2020, the NPCI issued guidelines capping the share of transactions handled by a third-party application providers (TPAPs) at 30% each.
- TPAPs refer to the Application Programming Interface (API) designed in UPI exclusively for banks.
- These are either standalone applications or applications that add functionality to an existing parent program / system.
- In the financial space, third party apps are often connected to a banking application to provide a variety of services.
- The norms aimed to reduce any single-point failure risk by ensuring that UPI volumes do not get concentrated in the hands of a few players.
- In March 2020, when Yes Bank was placed under moratorium, PhonePe had to work overnight to switch banks as its transactions were handled by UPI.
News Summary
- Payment apps PhonePe and Google Pay have received a breather, with the NPCI giving them two more years to comply with guidelines on volume caps.
- Flipkart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay have 47% and 33% market share respectively.
- If NPCI enforced the caps immediately, it would result in UPI transactions shrinking dramatically. Hence, it has extended the deadline for two years.
Criticism of guidelines on volume caps
- Analysts protested the idea because there is no way for any market participant to reduce their own market share without actively denying service to the end customer.
- E.g., PhonePe has a market share of 47%. To reduce UPI market share to 30%, it would be forced to deny UPI payment services to crores of Indians.
- As per the guidelines, the burden is on other existing and new UPI players to invest more time, effort & money to increase their own UPI market share.
- Failing that, the organic market share of participants in the UPI industry will not change significantly, and NPCI will have to keep extending the market cap indefinitely.