PAYMENT NETWORKS
- March 14, 2022
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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PAYMENT NETWORKS
TOPIC: Economy
Section: Monetary Policy and banking
Context- The sanctions-led withdrawal of card payments networks like Visa and Mastercard from Russia throws light on the dominance of US-based companies in the global payments ecosystem.
Concept-
- In India two UPI cost apps — Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay — accounted for over two-thirds of the whole transactions recorded in the course of a month.
- Domestic card operator RuPay has emerged as the largest challenger to US majors Visa and Mastercard.
- As per the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), largest UPI apps include: PhonePe followed by Google Pay , Paytm Payments Bank and Amazon Pay.
About UPI:
- Unified Payments Interface is an advanced version of Immediate Payment Service (IMPS)- round–the-clock funds transfer service to make cashless payments faster, easier and smoother.
- NPCI launched UPI with 21 member banks in 2016.
- UPI is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one hood.
- UPI is currently the biggest among the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) operated systems including:
- National Automated Clearing House (NACH),
- Immediate Payment Service (IMPS),
- Aadhaar enabled Payment System (AePS),
- Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS),
- RuPay etc.
- The top UPI apps today include PhonePe, Google Pay, PayTm, Amazon Pay and BHIM, the latter being the Government offering.
RuPay Card:
- RuPay is the first-of-its-kind domestic Debit and Credit Card payment network of India.
- The name is derived from the words ‘Rupee and ‘Payment’, emphasises that it is India’s very own initiative for Debit and Credit Card payments.
- The card can also be used for transactions in Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
National Payments Corporation of India:
- NPCI, an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.
- It is an initiative of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
- It is a “Not for Profit” Company under the provisions of Section 8 of Companies Act 2013 with an intention to provide infrastructure to the entire Banking system in India for physical as well as electronic payment and settlement systems.