On Thursday, the National Payments Corporation of India said it have widened the shareholder base while raising Rs 82 crore from 19 entities. Some of the known names are Standard Chartered, Amazon Pay, and PhonePe.
The National Payments Corporation of India is a not-for-profit initiative of the Reserve Bank of India. Till now NPCI has raised the amount as part of the exercise which enlarges the shareholder base for the entity widely credited for coming up with a platform like Unified Payments Interface.
RBI has opened the application window for a new umbrella entity based on the lines of NPCI. It will aim to reduce the concentration risk of the payments system which will rely on NPCI.
The 19 new shareholders in NPCI will hold stakes ranging from 0.04-0.44 percent. Additionally, offers were made to 131 RBI-regulated entities, out of which 19 responded.
H Acharya, the chief of finance, NPCI said, “With this, we have also broad-based our shareholding to include new categories like payment banks, small finance banks, and payment system operators in addition to the existing public sector, private sector, foreign, co-operative and regional rural banks.”
