The hottest sector for investments, innovation and burning venture money in India aren’t e-commerce, food delivery or ride-hailing. It’s digital payments. From 671 million transactions in Nov 2016 when over 85% of India’s physical currency was summarily demonetised, the volume of digital transactions has grown to over a billion by the end of 2017. The projected market is slated to be $500 billion by 2020. Whether local or international, all the 800-pound gorillas of tech are battling it out for leadership with their own payments products—Flipkart with PhonePe, Google with Tez, Facebook with Whatsapp Payments, Amazon and Alibaba-backed Paytm*.
Bow Down Mister
NPCI, The God of Many Things
As India’s digital payments sector explodes in usage, it becomes a battleground for the world’s largest tech companies. And smack in the middle of that fight stands the National Payments Corporation, an entity like no other
Besides banks, many institutions from RBI to different ministries have come to rely on NPCI. And that reflects in its decision making
A smooth UPI experience on WhatsApp means the switching cost from any payments app to WhatsApp is nil. This could upset Paytm
NPCI has over 1,000 employees and is a profitable non-profit
With UPI, NPCI has come a full circle. First, it was a bank vs fintechs story. Now it is simply a big vs small story
