Reserve Bank of India, after setting up of the Board for Payment and Settlement Systems in 2005, released a vision document incorporating a proposal to set up an umbrella institution for all the RETAIL PAYMENT SYSTEMS in the country. The core objective was to consolidate and integrate the multiple systems with varying service levels into nation-wide uniform and standard business process for all retail payment systems. The other objective was to facilitate an affordable payment mechanism to benefit the common man across the country and help financial inclusion.

IBA's untiring efforts during the last three years helped turning this vision a reality. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was incorporated in December 2008 and the Certificate of Commencement of Business was issued in April 2009. It has been incorporated as a Section 25 company under Companies Act and is aimed to operate for the benefit of all the member banks and their customers. The authorized capital has been pegged at Rs 300 crore and paid up capital is Rs 30 crore so that the company can create infrastructure of large dimension and operate on high volume resulting payment services at fraction of the present cost structure.

Presently, there are ten core promoter banks ( State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank and HSBC). The Board constitutes of Shri N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys Technologies Ltd as the Chairman, Nominee from Reserve Bank of India, Nominees from ten core promoter banks and Shri A.P.Hota, CGM RBI as the interim CEO. The Board for Regulation and Supervision of Payment and Settlement Systems (BPSS) at its meeting held on September 24,2009 has approved in-principle to issue authorisation to NPCI for operating various retail payment systems in the country and granted Certificate of Authorisation for operation of National Financial Switch (NFS) ATM Network with effect from October 15, 2009. NPCI has deputed its officials to IDRBT Hyderabad and NPCI has taken over NFS operations from December 14, 2009. Membership regulations & rules are being framed for enrolling all banks in the country as members so that when the nation-wide payment systems are launched, all would get included on a standardised platform.

A Technical Advisory Committee has also been constituted with two eminent professors of IIT, Mumbai. Prof. N.L.Sarda is the Chairman and Prof. G.Sivakumar is the Co-Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee. Members in this committees are drawn from banks at the level of Deputy General Manager/ Asst. General Manager.

Next