JOIN USNational Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has said that the Reserve Bank of India should think about interoperability among authorised wallet companies in the future.
“The regulator (RBI) should think about interoperability between authorised wallet companies. We certainly need strong regulations which will make it happen,” NPCI managing director and chief executive officer A P Hota said.
We discuss a lot of issues with the RBI periodically and the final outcome may well depend on when the payment banks come up, Hota added.
There are around 16 authorised wallet companies in India including Paytm, Mobikwik, Oxigen Services, Airtel Money, M-Pesa by Vodafone and Citrus Payment Solutions. Currently, interoperability among these players is not allowed in the country.
Wallet companies allow consumers to pre-load money and use it to pay later, for things that they buy through internet.
According to Hota, NPCI, which is the umbrella organisation for retail payments in India, is talking to RBI for prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) to be included in the Unified Payment Interface (UPI). “We are talking to RBI for PPIs and wallet companies to be included in UPI. We hope to get RBI approval for the same in the next 1-2 months,” Hota said. The company is working on rolling out three initiatives over the next 9 months, he added.
“We hope to roll out UPI by the Dec quarter and the RuPay credit card in the March quarter,” Hota added.