By A bank consortium-owned umbrella organisation for retail payments and settlements in India known as The National Payments Corporation of India NPCI has announced plans to implement blockchain technology in order to bolster digital transactions.
As per a report published Business Today on Sunday, the NPCI stated that it has plans to develop a “resilient, real-time and highly scalable” blockchain platform through the use of open-source technology.
In addition to this, the organisation has already launched an Expression of Interest (Eol) reaching out to entities in order to bid for the development of a blockchain solution to the payments industry.
The NPCI is a non-profit organization which has support from the Indian Central Bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as well as Indian Banks’ Association. Furthermore, it has support and is promoted by 10 banking institutions including the State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank and HSBC, and has 56 banks as shareholders as of 2016.
Although the status of public cryptocurrencies is still very much a grey area, the nation’s central bank has stated it is conducting research into the best way to implement rupee-backed central bank digital currency into its monetary policy in an effort to reduce the nation’s hefty yearly bill for minting physical cash.
In addition to this, the nation of India is also highly enthusiastic about blockchain technology. Just last year, National Institution for Transforming India (called NITI Aayog), a government entity, stated that it would nation’s Export-Import Bank (Exim Bank) to begin research into blockchain tech in partnership with banks within the BRICS economic bloc.
This is potentially great news for India’s crypto and blockchain sector. Especially considering the fact that all crypto trading was outlawed back in 2018. Perhaps the implementation of blockchain could lead the nation back to friendlier stance towards crypto? Only time will tell.
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