What comes to your mind when thinking of digital payments? It could be Paytm, Google Pay or PhonePe for some, but for a majority of Indians, it would be UPI – Unified Payments Interface introduced in 2016.
While the UPI platform gave a much-needed boost to digital payments in India, the Reserve Bank of India took it to another level by introducing UPI for feature phones – 123Pay, on March 8, to further take the technology to the rural areas, empowering people without smartphones to make UPI transactions.
Witnessing this increasing penetration of UPI in the country, a new competitor is soon to enter the race, posing a challenge to the top digital payment apps like Google Pay, PhonePe, Amazon Pay and Paytm. The brand-new entrant in the UPI race would be none other than the century-old conglomerate – Tata Group.
Tata UPI app
Looking to launch its own UPI app soon, the salt-to-steel conglomerate is seeking clearance from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to begin operations on the UPI as a third-party payments service provider, Economic Times quoted people in the know of it as saying.
Tata, through its digital commerce unit Tata Digital, is in talks with private lender ICICI Bank to back its UPI infrastructure. The group has held talks with another leading private sector lender as an additional banking partner, sources said.
“The Tatas have applied to the NPCI to operate as TPAP (Third Party Application Providers) and are hoping it can go live next month,” a person aware of the matter said.
To provide UPI services, non-banking platforms such as Google Pay, PhonePe make deals with banks. Moreover, to deal with large transaction volumes, UPI apps chose partenering with multiple banks to share the load.
For instance, Google Pay, one of the apps having a major market share in offering UPI services, works with State Bank of India, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank. The other notable apps include PhonePe, Amazon Pay, Paytm and WhatsApp Pay.
UPI penetration in India
Meanwhile, UPI subscribers have seen a rise off late and in February, UPI saw 4.52 billion transactions in total, amounting to Rs 8.26 trillion in February. In January, the number was 4.61 billion transactions, amounting to Rs 8.32 trillion, as per NPCI data.
