FSS launches Future-Ready Payments Technology Platform.

BLAZE is expected to offer significant efficiency gains in terms of speed and scalability, ensure high durability during peak workloads, improved fraud prevention, and enhanced services to banks and financial institutions while simplifying choices and bolstering confidence of end consumers. For example, FSS Payment Gateway, powered by BLAZE, can handle more than 5,000 transactions per second (TPS) to ensure a higher number of successful transactions during peak hours. BLAZE enables banks to deliver higher TPS to align with the growing digital commerce adoption in the country.

Banks, currently operating on legacy monolithic infrastructures, face numerous challenges such as the flexibility of enabling quick system integrations, inability to provide exceptional customer experience for ease of payments and ensuring cost efficiency for lower cost per transaction, among others. BLAZE addresses the core of these challenges. The adoption of BLAZE will also empower financial institutions to roll out innovative payment offerings to market at a much faster speed, enhance their competitive edge and attract new customers.

A survey report by LocalCircles in March revealed a startling fact: more than 70% users may stop transacting via UPI if there is a fee! The debate over fees for UPI transactions drew everyone’s attention in August 2022 when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released a discussion paper proposing a tiered fee structure for UPI payments. However, the proposal was not taken forward and the government said it would not levy any charges since UPI is a ‘digital public good’. Interestingly, the topic rekindled a discussion among industry stakeholders, experts and small UPI players: how to make UPI sustainable? Let’s look at what UPI does today. UPI facilitated more than 48 crore transactions per day while the monthly value reached 20.64 lakh crore in July, according to NPCI. The sheer size of UPI – both in terms of volume and value – makes it a strong driver of financial inclusion as it enables millions of Indians from across varied socio-economic strata to make and receive payments.
RBI proposals aimed to introduce charges for UPI transactions includes the possibility of implementing a tiered fee structure based on different transaction amount bands.

Legacy of UPI

The implications of UPI’s popularity reach far beyond convenience: