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National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella organisation for retail payments in India, will expand its shareholding base to 60 banks from 10 at present, by inducting 50 more banks as shareholders, raising about ₹100 crore in the process.
“We are broad-basing the ownership of NPCI and widen the players with 50 more banks by the year-end … It will further strengthen the retail payments infrastructure in India,” said AP Hota, Managing Director and CEO of NPCI.
Currently, NPCI has 10 core promoter banks, including six public sector, two private and two foreign banks, with a total paid-up capital of ₹100 crore (₹10 crore from each bank).
The new capital will be raised by issuing shares to four categories of banks — ₹5 crore from banks with business of ₹2-lakh crore and above, ₹2 crore from those below ₹2-lakh crore, ₹25 lakh from regional rural banks and scheduled co-operative banks, and ₹5 lakh from urban co-operative banks.
“We will be finalising the capital-raising in July itself…This will be the first not-for-profit organisation in India to go for a private placement…The capital will be used for building a new switch of 100 million capacity, build a campus (likely in Hyderabad) and build new products, such as Unified Payment Interface (UPI),” Hota added.
The UPI will facilitate fast and real-time collection and not just transfer of money, and will provide two-factor authentication based on a single click. NPCI will release the specifications in a week’s time and a pilot of the UPI will take place in November.
RuPay, JCB tie-up On Monday, NPCI partnered Japan’s payment card network JCB International, subsidiary of Japan’s JCB Co, for payment cards issuance and acceptance.
Under the pact, JCB cards will be accepted at all NPCI-accepted point-of-sale terminals and ATM locations in India. The partnership will also include the issuance of RuPay/JCB international cards by NPCI member-banks that will be globally accepted through the JCB network, the two companies said in a joint statement on Monday.
“We plan to issue at least 10 million co-branded cards in 10 years ….We will begin with issuing debit cards in the first phase,” said Kimihisa Imada, Deputy President, JCB International.
The companies aim to launch this by the second half of 2016.
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