Paytm NUE licence consortium most diverse: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

The NUE, whose idea was floated by RBI in August last year, is an alternative to the NPCI, which is the sole entity that manages retail payments right now

Paytm's consortium for applying for the New Umbrella Entity (NUE) licence is the "most diverse", according to Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma. 

The NUE, whose idea was floated by the Reserve Bank of India in August last year, is an alternative to the National Payments Corporation of India, which is the sole entity that manages retail payments right now. The new entity has seen interest from the likes of Reliance, YES Bank, Paytm, Ola Financial among others. 

So far, there are six consortia that have bid for the NUE. Paytm has a consortium with Ola Financial, IndusInd Bank, Centrum Finance, Zeta and Electronic Payment and Services Pvt Limited.

Speaking on the sidelines of a Paytm event to launch two new IoT-based Point of Sale devices, Sharma said theirs "is the most diverse consortium with a bank, small bank, payment bank, NBFC, in fact everybody, so yes we are looking at this". He however said it was too premature to say anything more on the issue since the application process was still on. 

NPCI's chairman Dilip Asbe, who also attended the virtual Paytm event, said in conversation with Sharma that the "NUE story actually puts pressure back on ourselves and the NPCI management team and the employees of NPCI. We believe we need to do a lot more".

He added that given that the rate of growth of digital payments was growing so fast, it was the right time for RBI to talk about having a parallel entity to look at retail payments. 

Speaking earlier at the same event, T R Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Visa, said he agreed with the RBI's reasons to bring up the idea of NUE. 

"Number one, in a country like ours, they believe a payment is a systemically important infrastructure. And they don't want a single point of failure. They want to avoid a concentration risk. Number two, they also said that equally, they believe that the variegated...nature of the Indian market, the heterogeneous nature of the Indian market, (which) means that one size does not fit all," he said. 

Visa is part of another consortium including Amazon, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, Pine Labs and Billdesk, which have applied for the NUE licence.