The Tata Group is reportedly seeking an approval from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to begin operating on the United Payments Interface (UPI) as a third-party payments service provider that offers digital payments services.
The group’s digital commerce unit, Tata Digital, is negotiating with ICICI Bank to power its UPI infrastructure, sources in the know of developments were quoted in a Economic Times (ET) report as saying.
Tata Digital has also carried out discussions with another top private lender as an additional banking partner.
Non-banking platforms like Google Pay, Amazon Pay and PhonePe work with multiple banks to share the load of dealing with large transaction volumes.
“The Tatas have applied to the NPCI to operate as TPAP (Third Party Application Providers) and are hoping it can go live next month,” a source confirmed to the ET.
“They (Tata group) want to have this ready by the time Tata Neu is launched so more UPI payments can be enabled across the superapp with ease,” another person in the know of the matter was quoted in the report.
The launch of Tata Neu, a much-awaited super app of the Tata group, will coincide with the 15th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), of which the Tata Group is the title sponsor.