Low-ticket transaction processing costs range from 80 paise to 1 rupee: NPCI’s Dilip Asbe

Dilip Asbe, MD & CEO of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

The transaction processing costs for low-ticket transactions in India fall in the range of 80 paise to one rupee, even at the scale of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), said Dilip Asbe, managing director and chief executive officer of National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI), adding that the organisation is looking at increasing efficiency for transactions in the segment.

“We're looking at the cost of low-ticket transactions. Now the transaction processing costs in India even at the scale of UPI, fall in the range of 80 paise to one rupee. That is quite a large cost,” said Asbe, speaking at the Bharat Fintech Fest, on February 8. He added that designing UPI Lite was NPCI’s effort in the same direction.

The NPCI chief also said that the umbrella organisation, which facilitates services such as UPI Payments, Bharat Bill Pay, RuPay Card, FASTag, and others, is attempting to help credit by integrating the RuPay Credit Card on UPI. According to Asbe, the large digital public infrastructure, which includes products such as the account aggregator, provides a level playing field for fintech startups.

Talking about how Indian policies are also consumer-centric, Anjani Rathor, the chief digital officer of HDFC Bank said India’s data privacy framework ensures that companies seek consent from customers before using their data for monetary or non-monetary purposes.

“India is making a clear sound that data belongs to the citizens of this country. It does not belong to any entity whosoever is getting them onboard. Data is now available digitally only with the consent of the customer for everybody, whether they monetize it or not,” said Rathor, who was also a panellist in the session where experts discussed the future of the fintech ecosystem.

After multiple revisions over the years, the government released a new version of the data protection bill in November last year, which regulates how a citizen's personal data is collected, maintained, and processed.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, proposes a number of modern provisions, such as a user's right to know exactly what personal data about them is being collected, as well as how it is managed and processed.

Rathor added that both regulated and non-regulated entities who want to monetise customer data will have to prioritise consent from the user. “That is why we are seeing a lot of technology companies who used to just monetise on that data need to now learn how to get the consent of the customer,” he said.