Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professional & people who participated in the e-Panel discussions:
- Mr. A P Hota, Former Managing Director & CEO of NPCI
- Mr. P D Singh, Former General Manager, Bank of Baroda
- Mr. Manish Khera, Founder & CEO Happy
- Mr. Rishi Gupta, MD & CEO, Fino Payments Bank
- Mr. Probir Roy, Co-founder, Paymate
- Mr. Ravi Shankar, Co-founder & CEO, Active Intelligence Pte Ltd
- Mr. Ratnakar V, Deputy Vice President- Rural Lending & Payments, Axis Bank
- Mr. Manish Diwaan, Senior Product Manager, VP Bank, Vietnam
- Mr. Ram Rastogi, Consultant, Digital Payments & Financial Inclusion
- Mr. Naveen Surya, Chairman Emeritus, Payment Council of India
- Mr. Vikas Panditrao, Forum of Industry and Academic Knowledge Sharing(FIAKS)
- Many other CEO/CXO Bankers & Fintech professionals on FIAKS Forum
In the community, it was discussed that key ingredient for Policy formation is
- Domain expertise
- Freedom of expression of real concerns
- An ability to take tough decisions that may even go against a few power centers
- Provide an environment to challenge the policy makers
Does the committee constituted on deepening of digital payments has missed on these ingredients? A member questions how come, Mr. Padmanabhan G, Former Executive Director of the RBI, who has such a great understanding of the payment is not in the list? Also, digitalization revolves mostly around NPCI. How come, Mr. A. P. Hota is not in the list?
An expert adds that the committees are always created to defer the issues or bring their own agenda with the help of handpicked people. You have seen the results of the RBI committee on Payment Banks. What happened to the Wattal Committee Report? He also shared Wattal committee report Wattal Report.pdf
Another member of the community said that please note that it is probably a hidden agenda of Government which will be fulfilled through recommendations from this committee. A respected FIAKS community member shares his view on the RBI panel for payments. It’s a team led by Mr. Nandan Nilekani that created Aadhaar, India stack, and UPI. Not many people could have even imagined this could have happened. RBI did right for once when they transferred the onus to the best.
The suggestions of the community members of having representation from each payment player like wallets, payment gateway, card associations, e-commerce, payment banks, small finance bank and other was mocked and it was said that it will make it a joint parliamentary committee which always has representatives from each party MP and thus membership of JPC goes to 45-50. Ideally, a committee has 5-7 members which rightly done. This member expected Dr. Khan to be Chairman of Committee.
FIAKS asked an expert ” If the government gave you the mandate, then what will be your approach? To this question he said :
- No special interests should be allowed in the committee. But you must have people who are fiercely independent and can speak their mind fearlessly though such people will not be liked and never co-opted. If there is sincerity such people must be included. Also, it is factually incorrect to say that Mr.Nandan Nilekani created UPI and India stack.
- Behavioral economist/s with proven record be tasked to at least give recommendations if not be directly on the committee.
- The entire focus should be the end-consumer – this the most difficult conundrum to solve
- Look at solutions which have worked – not necessarily in the digitization/payment domain. Human motivations are way too complex. To give an example: For organ donation, there are two options – opt in or opt out. What this means is that either people are asked to opt into the scheme of organ donation. The default is no choice. However, the other option is to have by default “organ donation” for all citizens and they have the choice to “opt out”. Now those countries that have chosen “opt out” have seen great success.
The majority of the members on FIAKS community were of the opinion that Mr. Nandan Nilekani has done a great service to the nation and here again will do an outstanding job.
Another FIAKS expert commented that there was an urgency of this committee. Despite the exponential growth in UPI, it is a fact that hardly about 80-100 million customers are using digital payments – cards, mobile, and internet. The customers who are already used to internet banking, NEFT, IMPS, and cards are using more of UPI transactions. Well-served people are better served each day.
Register and read the entire discussions and learn about how the committee is constituted in the UK