NPCI expects all banks to switch to digital payments by Mar 2018

Govt of India has set a target of 25 billion digital transactions in this financial year

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) expects all banks in the country, including cooperative banks, to migrate to digital payments mode by March 2018.

“Almost all banks have tied up with NPCI. Our idea is to cover all banks — even the cooperative banks — within a year, say by March 2018. All banks in the country will be a part of the digital payments system”, said A P Hota, managing director and chief executive officer, NPCI.

Currently, 56 banks are shareholders of NPCI — they include 19 public sector lenders, 17 private banks, three foreign banks, 10 regional rural banks and seven multi-state cooperative banks.

The Government of India has set a target of 25 billion digital transactions in this financial year. If achieved, the volume would be nearly three-fold growth over the 9.10 billion transactions logged in FY17.

"In the April-June quarter, the target for digital transactions was 4 billion but we achieved 3.4 billion. Digital transactions slowed in the first quarter but we are positive that we will achieve the target for this financial year. More publicity and awareness is needed to boost digital transactions,” Hota said.
 

The volume of digital transactions has been fixed at 6 billion, 7 billion and 8 billion in the second, third and fourth quarters, respectively.

Bill payments and electronic transit payments are poised to drive the growth for digital transactions in the future.
 

NPCI has built a scheme called the National Electronic Toll Collection System for transaction processing, clearance and settlement, dispute management and a mapper for capturing vehicle details.

"We want to bring electronic payments in the transit space in a big way. We have covered 360 of the 375 toll gates on the national highways. But, the electronic payments system is only available in one lane — we need to extend to all lanes on the national highways and also to the state highways,” he said.
 

For transit systems, NPCI has covered the metro trains in Kochi, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. It is betting on the 100 Smart Cities identified by the central government to speed up digital transactions.

NPCI's Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) app has crossed 16 million downloads and an active customer base of 4 million by the end of June. The BHIM app is a common platform across the nation for making simple, easy and quick payments.