After five months without a Chief, NPCI elevates Dilip Asbe as MD & CEO

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has elevated Dilip Asbe as managing director (MD) & CEO. Asbe was serving the retail payment body as COO. He will succeed A.P.Hota, who retired in August last year.

Hota served NPCI as first MD and CEO for about 7 years. He assumed office in August 2010. From August 2017, Asbe was appointed as CEO in-charge.

Asbe along with Hota launched several payment instruments such as Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Bharat QR and Rupay cards, the Indian version of network providers like Visa/Mastercard.

NPCI was set up in 2009 as an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India initiated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA).

The payment body is promoted by 10 major banks, including State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank, with a total of 56 member banks as its shareholders.

Asbe has played a pivotal role in setting up digital payment infrastructure in India. His role was crucial in establishing National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC), RuPay international debit and credit card, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) platforms using Aadhaar Payments Bridge (APB).

He also involved in designing Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS).

During Hota regime, NPCI introduced Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) that facilitates 24x7 real-time money transfer. UPI also runs on IMPS.

Hota also played a role in the implementation of Magnetic Ink Character Recognition technology used in cheque clearing, electronic funds transfer, automated clearing house and cheque truncation system in India.

Before NPCI, Hota headed the Department of Payment and Settlement Systems in Reserve Bank from March 2005 to July 2008.

Currently, there are 61 banks live on Unified Payments Interface platform. As per NPCI, total UPI transactions in last month recorded 145 million transactions in December while the value of transactions stood at Rs 13,174 crore in the same month.

The development was first reported by Mint.