India Announces Blockchain-Based 'Vajra' Payments Platform

npci vajra platform announced blockchain based payments

The National Payments Corporation of Bharat (NPCI) has officially appear a blockchain-based payments platform that it says volition provide "highly secure and tamper-evident transactions" via a distributed ledger system. Called 'Vajra', or lightning, the platform has been designed to automate the process of clearing and settling payments for NPCI transactions.

In an official press release detailing the utilize of the new platform, the organization said: "A permissioned network will be setup so that just the parties who have been approved by the Network Administrator can be a part of the network. Since Vajra is being developed for a payments processing industry, permission less blockchain systems were not considered".

Co-ordinate to the release, Vajra will take three types of nodes, including the Clearing Business firm node, the Notary node and the Participant node. As explained past NPCI, the Immigration House node volition take admin rights for the platform and volition be maintained by the organisation itself. "It will provide a root-say-so-signed TLS document from the network'south permissioning service to the participant nodes", said the release.

As for the Notary node, it will receive transactions simply from the Clearing Firm node and will just validate transactions in case Aadhar biometric is used for hallmark. Finally, the Participant nodes will include all banks, financial institutes and payment gateways, enabling them to post, receive and view transactions on the platform.

NPCI claims that the new technology volition bring real-time visibility into transactions, thereby reducing disputes and improving dorsum-end operations at banks. The decentralized platform will also help reduce the pain of reconciliation across all the participants, it said. Finally, the ditching the manual procedure will besides help reduce processing errors and bring downwards the costs for everyone involved. Republic of india has recently seen an increment in blockchain based platforms. BSES had recently launched a blockchain platform for solar power trading, and the TRAI is planning to utilise blockchain to block spam.

Currently, the Vajra project is supported past 56 private and public sector banks in India, including the Land Bank of India, Punjab National Banking company, Canara Bank, Banking concern of Baroda, Matrimony Banking concern of India, Banking concern of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Banking company, Citibank and HSBC. NCPI says it wants to bring more banks on-board in the future as part of its plans to become "the all-time payment network globally".

Featured Image Courtesy: NPCI