Coronavirus Lockdown: Urging all to go digital, NPCI affirms payments systems will be running in lockdown

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Thursday said it has improvised its business continuity plan to ensure that payment systems in the country are up and running during the coronavirus lockdown.

It also urged more people to use digital payments in order to reduce the risk of social contact that causing currency notes entails.

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“Our business continuity plan is resilient and has been improvised to meet the challenging requirements for COVID 19, across all our payment systems. Specifically, the infrastructure will support the additional load and challenges on the United Payments Interface (UPI) platform,” NPCI managing director and chief executive Dilip Asbe said.

"We urge all service providers of essential services and consumers to switch to digital payments methods to stay protected,” he added.

He said the NPCI is working with state governments to ensure that more number of vendors on-board the digital payments

The body has fast tracked the onboarding system on UPI or UPI-QR to make it totally contactless and fully online and Vendors do not have to compromise on self-isolation guidelines to complete this essential tasks, he said.