UPI service for foreign delegates without needing a bank account, RuPay payments that can be made through accessories such as smartwatches, India’s digital rupee, and a database platform that can be used to lend money for various purposes — these are the tools in India’s digital public infrastructure arsenal that will be on display for foreign delegates during the G20 Summit later this week.
“We obviously want to showcase our technological platforms to set us apart in the Global South, but we also want the developed countries to take a look at them,” a senior official from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said. “We want to show case the platforms we have built for a country of India’s scale.”
The Indian Express had earlier reported that throughout India’s presidency of the G20, it has played up the country’s efforts at creating digital public infrastructure and has also explored other nations’ interest to adopt the underlying technologies that power India’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) push, which it brands as the India Stack.
Industry analysts see this as India’s bid to set itself up as a nation pioneering digital governance, especially as it aspires to assume a leadership role in the Global South. Within government circles, this is also being pegged as a differentiator from rival China, which is funding physical infrastructure development in other developing countries.
“DPIs, for the first time ever, reached a global consensus and what ought to be their definition, framework, and principles… India is now a case study, as a nation that employed and deployed technological tools for progress and growth. Countries that have lagged behind increasingly see this as a way to follow India’s lead in DPIs, an open-source digital infrastructure… Through these G20 conversations, we have further understood how DPIs are a powerful mechanism for inclusion, especially for countries in the Global South,” Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said at a press briefing Tuesday.
At the RBI’s pavilion at the G20 Summit venue, an experience centre would be available for delegates which will have an interactive demonstration of RBI’s Public Tech Platform (PTP) for frictionless credit.
The platform serves as a single window for accessing citizens’ information held by multiple government departments and ministries. Lenders can connect to the platform to source such data or information required for making credit assessment and decision in a seamless manner. The RBI had launched a pilot of the platform in August and is first focusing on products such as Kisan Credit Card, dairy loans, collateral-free loans for MSMEs, personal loans and home loans.
Foreign delegates will also be able to experience the UPI platform, which has been among the prominent pitches that India has made to the world, including both developing and developed countries. The RBI official said that the facility will be provided to G20 guests without them needing to have a bank account in India.
“The delegates will be issued Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) wallets linked to UPI for making payments at merchant outlets,” the RBI official said. When the foreign nationals are leaving India they can either convert the balance in the prepaid wallet back as foreign currency or decide to hold the balance in the wallet for use in the next trip if they frequently visit India, he said.
This assumes significance given that India is actively marking other countries to adopt the UPI architecture. The service is being accepted in international markets such as France, UAE, Singapore and Sri Lanka, with countries like Japan having shown an interest in adopting the payments system.
Incidentally, China had made a similar push at the Winter Olympics in Beijing last year, when sporting delegations were given the option of paying vendors for food and souvenirs with the ‘e-CNY’, or the electronic yuan (the Chinese Central Bank Digital Currency or CBDC).
New Delhi is also looking to showcase the solutions it has developed for non-resident Indians, particularly for making cross-border transactions for paying bills in India through the Bharat Bill Payment System. A variety of bills including electricity, water, gas, telephone, DTH, and insurance can be paid through the system.
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Apart from that, RuPay’s on the go service, which allows users to carry out contact-less payment transactions through accessories they wear such as smartwatches and smart rings will also be showcased. “At the same time, India is also having a conversation with several countries to adapt its homegrown card network which has domestically emerged as a major competitor to the duopoly of Mastercard and Visa,” the RBI official said.
A live transaction of the digital rupee, also a CBDC, will also be shown to delegates. The Indian Express has also learnt that the RBI is looking to expand the use of the digital rupee central bank digital currency or e-rupee for a broader range of wholesale transactions including making CBDC tokens available for interbank call money market.
The number of transactions using CBDC peaked in July, which saw around 25,000 transactions, the RBI official said. However, the number for August was lower given that banks were focusing on making CBDC interoperable with UPI, he added.
