upi: Banks and service providers need to raise capacity to keep pace with UPI

Mumbai: Banks and payment service providers need to raise their digital transaction capacities substantially to keep pace with the trend and the National Payments Corp of India, which has built capacities that could handle nearly four times the transactions it processes now, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said.

“The UPI (Unified Payments Interface) currently handles 26 crore transactions a day and has the capacity to handle 100 crore transactions a day,” Das said at the launch of the RBI’s Digital Payments Awareness Week.

Unless banks and other payment system operators raise the capacity, best customer experience may not be realised, he said.

The RBI has been giving a big push to digitisation and is on a mission to take the Indian model globally. It has already facilitated payments through the UPI interface with Singapore.

It is also running pilot projects on the Central Bank Digital Currency, both for wholesale and retail transactions.

Governor Das said that the India-Singapore model had been well received and it could well be extended beyond the Southeast Asian nation.

“Several countries want to replicate the Indian payments systems,” said Das, adding that the RBI has been in talks “to have linkage with other countries”.Deputy governor T Rabi Sankar said the quick and economical digitisation of transactions had helped in the goal of financial inclusion as well, where millions were untouched by the formal financial system till a few years ago.

“Digitisation along with inclusion is essential for what India wants to achieve” in terms of economic growth where Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a target of a $5 trillion economy, he said.