NEW DELHI, February 27 (Reuters) – Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries has partnered with Facebook Inc, Google and fintech player Infibeam to create a national digital payment network, the Economic Times newspaper reported on Saturday, citing non-government sources. identified.
Last year, the central bank of India invited companies to forge new umbrella entities (NUEs) to create a payment network that would rival the system operated by the National Payments Council of India (NPCI) as it seeks to reduce the risks of concentration in space.
Created in 2008, NPCI is a non-profit company that, in March 2019, had dozens of banks as shareholders, including State Bank of India, Citibank and HSBC. It processes billions of dollars in daily payments through services that include interbank fund transfers, ATM transactions and digital payments.
Citing three unidentified sources, India’s main business daily, Economic Times, said the group led by Reliance and Infibeam was in advanced stages of submitting its proposal to the Reserve Bank of India.
An Infibeam spokesman declined to comment on the report, saying the company was bound by the confidentiality of the process, while Reliance, Google and Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Digital payments in India could increase to $ 135.2 billion in 2023, according to a study by Assocham-PWC India in 2019.
Facebook and Google have already partnered with Reliance and participate in Jio Platforms – the unit that houses Reliance’s music, film and telecommunications enterprise.
The RBI this week extended the deadline for all parties to submit NUE requests until March 31 from February 26.
The report said that the RBI should take another six months to study all the proposals submitted and that no more than two new NUE licenses are expected “for profit”.
The RBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Previous media reports said other parties to the fight include a group led by Amazon and Banco ICICI; another combination led by the conglomerate Tata Group and the private bank HDFC Bank; and a venture involving India’s largest mobile payment platform, Paytm, the domestic ride-sharing company Ola and IndusInd Bank. (Reporting by Manoj Kumar Editing by Clelia Oziel)