India's Reliance partners with Google, Facebook for digital payment network bid - ET

Avenuesai

27/02/2021 11:06

NEW DELHI, Feb 27 (Reuters) - India's conglomerate Reliance
Industries  RELI.NS  has partnered with Facebook Inc  FB.O ,
Google  GOOGL.O  and fintech player Infibeam  IFIB.NS  to set up
a national digital payment network, Economic Times newspaper
reported on Saturday, citing unnamed sources. 
    Last year, India's central bank invited companies to forge
new umbrella entities (NUEs) to create a payments network that
would rival the system operated by the National Payments Council
of India (NPCI), as it seeks to reduce concentration risks in
the space. 
    Set up in 2008, NPCI is a not-for-profit company, which as
of March 2019 counted dozens of banks as its shareholders,
including the State Bank of India  SBI.NS , Citibank  C.N  and
HSBC  HSBA.L . It processes billions of dollars in payments
daily via services that include inter-bank fund transfers, ATM
transactions and digital payments. 
    Citing three unnamed sources, India's leading business daily
Economic Times said that the group led by Reliance and Infibeam
was in the advanced stages of submitting their proposal to the
Reserve Bank of India.
    A spokesperson for Infibeam declined comment on the report,
saying the company was bound by the confidentiality of process,
while Reliance, Google and Facebook did not immediately respond
to a request for comment. 
    Digital payments in India could rise to $135.2 billion in
2023, according to an Assocham-PWC India study in 2019.
    Facebook and Google are already partnered with Reliance and
own stakes in Jio Platforms - the unit which houses Reliance's
music, movie apps and telecoms venture.
    The RBI this week extended the deadline for all parties to
submit NUE applications until March 31 from February 26. 
    The report said RBI is expected to take another six months
to study all the proposals being submitted and that it is not
expected to give more than two new "for-profit" NUE licences.  
    The RBI did not respond to a request for comment.
    Earlier media reports have said other parties in the fray
include a group led by Amazon  AMZN.O  and ICICI Bank  ICBK.NS ;
another combination led by the country's salt-to-software
conglomerate Tata Group and private lender HDFC Bank  HDBK.NS ;
and a venture involving India's largest mobile payment platform,
Paytm, domestic ride-sharing company Ola and IndusInd Bank
 INBK.NS . 

 (Reporting by Manoj Kumar
Editing by Clelia Oziel)
 ((manoj.kumar@thomsonreuters.com; +91(11) 49548029;))