India’s central bank has halted its plans for a high-profile project intended to rival the nation’s dominant payment system, Unified Payments Interface. The project had attracted significant interest from a variety of major conglomerates, tech giants, and financial institutions, including Amazon, Reliance, Facebook, Tata Group, Google, HDFC, and ICICI.
The Reserve Bank of India had initially invited bids in 2021 for licenses to operate new retail payment and settlement systems across India. The project was called New Umbrella Entity, or NUE.
However, according to RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar, the project’s potential participants failed to propose “any innovative or infrastructural solutions.” Sankar emphasized the central bank’s interest in exploring ideas that go beyond incremental improvements or substitutes for existing technologies.
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