national payments corporation of india ( npci ) have set up world - class payment infrastructure for securities and retail segment respectively. these two institutions have emerged as the bedrock of our payments innovations in wholesale and retail payments. a decade back, it would have been hard to imagine a mobile phone becoming such a powerful and broad - based medium of doing payment transactions. the launch of unified payments interface ( upi ) in 2016 has revolutionised the payments ecosystem with about 803 crore transactions3 worth 13 lakh crore processed in january 2023 alone. for indians, banking facilities are available at their fingertips today. we have moved far beyond doorstep banking. further, given the importance of remittances received from indian diaspora abroad, money transfer service scheme ( mtss ) operators form a significant section of psos. prepaid payment instrument ( ppi ) issuers have become a part of daily life for many indians. the facility provided by white label atm operators ( wlaos ) and instant money transfer ( imt ) operator have helped in expanding the avenues for cash 1 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches withdrawal. psos operating in niche segments like national electronic toll collection ( netc ), bharat bill payment operating units ( bbpous ) and the newest entrants – payment aggregators ( pas ) – are bringing ease of living to the segments they cater to. last but not the least, trade receivables discounting system ( treds ) platforms have enabled factoring of msme receivables in a transparent and competitive manner, thereby improving the liquidity position of msmes. on an average 35, 000 factoring units ( fus ) 4 worth 7, 200 crore are discounted or financed in treds every month. 4. the reserve bank has also taken a number of steps to increase safety and security of payment transactions as well as the ecosystem. introduction of additional factor of authentication ( afa ) for card - based e - commerce and online transactions, which was later extended to other payment modes and channels, is a success story in indian payment systems. simple measures like provision of switch on / switch off facility for card transactions have positively impacted the trust of cardholders in digital payments. in all these initiatives, the reserve bank has kept customer convenience and safety as the prime objective. other examples could be contactless card transactions, offline payments framework, e - mandate based transactions, card - on - file tokenisation ( coft ), etc. 5.

during the pandemic, resilience of payment systems was severely tested. movement of people running the operations of psos was restricted, and some of them also fell ill. in such a situation, a spurt in digital payments was observed. suddenly, many more people started transacting digitally. psos rose to the occasion and showed remarkable tenacity. all our payment systems have proved their worth during the pandemic. among other things, i remember the efforts taken to tag the payment systems and the stakeholders as'essential services '. this was a single - most defining factor which enabled everyone to carry out various transactions unhindered. 6. let me also highlight a few more major steps taken by the reserve bank in payments sphere in recent years. since mid - december 2019, neft has been made available on 24x7 basis. the same was replicated in rtgs a year later. this development allowed inter - bank settlement of ancillary payment systems to happen in rtgs on 24x7x365 basis. it also facilitated additional settlement cycles to be run by the payment system operators. presently around 90 multilateral net settlement batch files are posted in rtgs for effecting settlement of transactions during a particular day. this has reduced the attendant liquidity, credit and settlement risks. 7. in the card payments space, the reserve bank has issued instructions to restrict storage of card data only with card issuers and card networks. atm cash withdrawal transactions can now be completed without the need for cards. imagine how many cardrelated atm frauds can now be mitigated. 8. in the realm of upi, a number of steps have been taken recently. rupay credit cards have been permitted as underlying instrument in upi. upi lite has been introduced for offline payments. upi123pay was introduced to allow feature phone users to perform upi transactions. in february 2023, " upi one world " was launched to extend the upi facility to inbound travellers from g20 countries. further, inward payments have been permitted in bharat bill payment system ( bbps ) so that nris can seamlessly pay utility, education and other bills on behalf of their family members and friends. the scope, reach and utility of bbps has thus been significantly enlarged. 2 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches 9. the reserve bank has also permitted ppi issuers, card networks and wla operators to