Tata Group to join UPI payment club soon, says report

The Tata Group is reportedly venturing into India’s flourishing digital payments industry.

The salt-to-steel conglomerate is awaiting the National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) approval to begin operations through the flagship unified payments interface (UPI) as a third-party payments service provider, The Economic Times said on Tuesday (March 16), citing sources.

“The Tatas… are hoping it can go live next month,” the newspaper said.

Tata Digital is reportedly in talks with ICICI Bank to power its UPI infrastructure.

The Tatas’ move means the competition increases for Google Pay, PhonePe, Amazon Pay, Paytm and others. It, however, is likely to increase interoperability among UPI users and foster innovation in the space.

“Most big techs are leveraging their existing consumer base and behavioural data collected over the years to develop better payments solutions,” PwC had said in a 2021 report.

UPI has seen exponential growth over the past few years. In February 2022, it completed ₹4.5 billion transactions amounting to over ₹8.26 lakh crore ($108.3 billion) in value.