Mumbai: The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), will roll out the Unified Payment Interface services by the end of this year, which will enable individuals to electronically send and receive money without requiring bank account information.
On Thursday, the company said that it has awarded the contract to build the digital payment enablement platform to RS Software. Unified Payment Interface will offer a simple and secured platform for digital transaction through its Application Programme Interface (API) and harness the power of the existing payment infrastructure like Aadhaar.
“Once the infrastructure is in place, it would allow users to send and receive money electronically without requiring bank account information. All they would need is a single identifier such as their Aadhaar number or short payment address or mobile number,” the company added.
An individual who is willing to avail this facility will have to download an application from the bank. Once the application is downloaded, the customer is required to use the internet banking facility to generate a one-time payment address which can be his Aadhaar card number, mobile number or any other short payment address including email ID.
While making any online purchases, the customer is required to provide the payment address instead of giving the bank account details or one-time password. The payment address will be routed to the concerned bank, which will translate the payment address to actual address.
“We will be ready with the back-end infrastructure by the end of September 2015. We will roll out the service during the October-December period,” said A.P. Hota, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO), NPCI.
Mr Hota added that his company is already in discussion with 18 banks, which includes both private and public sector banks. “We would like to get started with as many banks as possible. I won’t be satisfied if the number of banks is not more than 50,” he added.
Explaining further, the company said that the platform will have security layers built into it to prevent misuse and ensure that money goes to the intended recipient. The new interface will also be a blessing for small-scale banks that do not have the necessary infrastructure to set up their own digital banking products.
