The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is a non-profit organization incorporated under Section 8 of the Companies Act 2013, operating as an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks' Association (IBA). Established in December 2008 with its Certificate of Commencement of Business issued in April 2009, NPCI operates India's retail payments and settlement infrastructure, providing essential backbone services for electronic payment systems across the country.
NPCI has developed the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which has become the world's largest real-time payment system by transaction volume, processing over 13 billion transactions monthly and serving 350 million individuals. UPI represents a population-scale digital public infrastructure achievement, demonstrating how QR-based acceptance can eliminate the need for expensive point-of-sale terminals while enabling universal digital payment access. Beyond UPI, NPCI operates multiple critical services including the National Financial Switch (NFS), which manages India's largest network of shared ATMs, and the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) for bank-led interoperable banking transactions.
With shareholding diversified among 65 banks and fintech companies, NPCI maintains majority control by public sector banks owned by the Indian state, ensuring the organization remains focused on public benefit rather than profit maximization. The organization operates under a governance structure designed to serve the entire banking system and Indian citizens, making it a model for how digital public infrastructure can be structured and governed at population scale.