The NPCI Approves Phi Commerce's UPI Switch

Nitin Konde, Varun Bhardwaj

Nov 22, 2024 — 3 min read

NPCI Approves Phi Commerce’s UPI Switch for Seamless Payments

The National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) has certified Phi Commerce, a fintech digital payment company, to provide UPI Switch to its business clients, mainly to maintain high transaction volumes.

Phi Commerce will be able to onboard enterprise customers more quickly thanks to UPI Switch, which will cut down on the turnaround time that comes with the current bank-driven approach for onboarding new clients. This will help their business clients to launch goods and services more quickly than they could in the past by allowing them to provide a wide variety of payment alternatives to their clients virtually instantly.

It will Help NPCI to Achieve its Goal

UPI Switch is a vital tool that will assist NPCI in reaching its ambitious goal of one billion transactions per day within the next three to five years, according to Rajesh Londhe, co-founder and head of payments at Phi Commerce. By distributing traffic over several servers, UPI switches shorten processing times and avoid system overloads.

By distributing the load among several servers, UPI Switch assists during periods of high demand when individuals scramble to make payments. It's similar to adding more checkout lanes to a grocery store during peak hours to speed up traffic. Londhe continued, "In this manner, users experience speedy, effective transactions without delay."

Offering Enterprises Omnichannel Payment Solutions

Businesses may use Phi Commerce's omnichannel payment solutions to make payments easy and flexible from any consumer touchpoint, including browsers, smartphones, in-store, and remote. Phi Commerce, a Reserve Bank of India-licensed payment aggregator payment gateway (PAPG), provides a single omnichannel digital payment platform that meets the needs of businesses globally in terms of both B2B and B2C payments.

The UPI Switch feature facilitates simple integration and provides risk management tools, on-premises or cloud-based architecture, and round-the-clock maintenance and support for dependability and uptime.

Unified Payment Stack Solution

UPI Switch is a unified payment stack solution that supports all other services that the NPCI has rolled out so far, including credit card linkages, recurring requirements, UPI Auto Pay, and quick refunds. As processing time decreases significantly, this add-on solution will also assist corporate clients in lowering their operating expenses while enhancing overall productivity and customer satisfaction.

In addition to controlling traffic, this function uses real-time fraud monitoring algorithms to keep an eye out for any odd or suspicious transactions.

With reaction times of less than a second, UPI switches manage billions of transactions. Additionally, it facilitates API-based interfaces, which allow for communication with a range of fintech platforms and financial institutions.

What is NCPI?

In order to establish a strong Payment & Settlement Infrastructure in India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks' Association (IBA) launched the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for running retail payments and settlement systems in India, in accordance with the terms of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.

Given the usefulness of its goals, NPCI was established as a "Not for Profit" company in accordance with Section 25 of the Companies Act 1956 (now Section 8 of the Companies Act 2013). Its goal is to supply infrastructure for both electronic and physical payment and settlement systems for the whole Indian banking system. In order to increase operational efficiency and expand the reach of payment systems, the company is committed to implementing technological advancements in retail payment systems.

ICICI Bank Limited, HDFC Bank Limited, Citibank N. A., HSBC, State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, and Bank of India are the ten primary promoter banks. In order to integrate additional banks from all industries, the shareholding was expanded to 56 member institutions in 2016. New RBI-regulated organisations, including payment banks, small finance banks, and payment service operators, were introduced in 2020. In accordance with the relevant requirements of the Companies Act of 2013, the shares were distributed in accordance with the issuance of equity shares on a private placement basis.