India Announces Blockchain-Based Payment Platform ‘Vajra’

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has officially announced a blockchain-based payments platform that it says will provide “highly secure and tamper-evident transactions” via a distributed ledger system. Called ‘Vajra’, or lightning, the platform has been designed to automate the process of clearing and settling payments for NPCI transactions.

In an official press release detailing the use of the new platform, the organization said: “A permissioned network will be setup so that only the parties who have been approved by the Network Administrator can be a part of the network. Since Vajra is being developed for a payments processing industry, permission less blockchain systems were not considered”.

According to the release, Vajra will have three types of nodes, including the Clearing House node, the Notary node and the Participant node. As explained by NPCI, the Clearing House node will have admin rights for the platform and will be maintained by the organization itself. “It will provide a root-authority-signed TLS certificate from the network’s permissioning service to the participant nodes”, said the release.

As for the Notary node, it will receive transactions only from the Clearing House node and will only validate transactions in case Aadhar biometric is used for authentication. Finally, the Participant nodes will include all banks, financial institutes and payment gateways, enabling them to post, receive and view transactions on the platform.

how payments will work on vajra blockchain platform

NPCI claims that the new technology will bring real-time visibility into transactions, thereby reducing disputes and improving back-end operations at banks. The decentralized platform will also help reduce the pain of reconciliation across all the participants, it said. Finally, the ditching the manual process will also help reduce processing errors and bring down the costs for everyone involved. India has recently seen an increase in blockchain based platforms. BSES had recently launched a blockchain platform for solar power trading, and the TRAI is planning to employ blockchain to block spam.

Currently, the Vajra project is supported by 56 private and public sector banks in India, including the State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank and HSBC. NCPI says it wants to bring more banks on-board in the future as part of its plans to become “the best payment network globally”.

Featured Image Courtesy: NPCI

Comments

iPhone 12 to Have 5nm Processor, Qualcomm’s X55 5G Modem: Report

Apple is all set to launch its first 5G iPhones next year, and a new report out of Japan now claims that they will ship with Qualcomm’s X55 5G modem under-the-hood. According to multiple sources quoted by the Nikkei Asian Review , at least three of the devices the company will launch next year, will ship with 5G connectivity. “It will be the first time Apple introduces 5G iPhones … There will be three of them and the company has set an aggressive sales target” , said one of them. As per the report, the next-gen iPhone lineup will be powered by the A14 chip that will use the 5nm technology, making it significantly more power efficient than its predecessor, the A13 Bionic, found on the current-gen iPhone 11 lineup. At least two of the three new phones will also have what the report called ‘flexible’ OLED displays, although it’s not immediately clear what it meant by that term. In addition, Apple is also developing a new ‘3D-sensing rear-camera’ that is said to be able to “sense t...

Windows 10 Insider Build 19013 Adds Power Toys, New Kaomoji, and More

Microsoft has already pushed the near-final release version of the Windows 10 November 2019 Update and is now focusing its efforts on the next major 20H1 update. We’ve been keeping track of the new features being tested with Insiders for some time now and well, the latest build, number 19013, brings improvements to the Linux subsystem, emoji tray, and Your Phone features. The highlights of Insider Build 19013 is the return of Power Toys. They’re special utilities that were made popular in the Windows 95 and Windows XP era, but had been nixed to make way for new features over the past few years. Well, they’ve now made a return to Windows 10 20H1 Insider builds this month, starting with 2 features, PowerRename and FancyZones. While PowerRename makes it possible for users to rename files in bulk, the FancyZones feature lets you drag apps into defined target positions on your PC. You can take a close look at the FancyZones feature right here . Apart from this, the Windows subsystem f...

“Call of Duty: Mobile” Is Finally Available for Everyone to Play

One of the biggest and most popular video game franchises is finally available on mobile devices. After announcing it at its GDC 2019 keynote earlier in the year, Activision has finally brought its super-popular FPS franchise, Call of Duty , to Android and iOS. The game has been released in most countries around the world simultaneously, including India. Called ‘Call of Duty: Mobile’ , the free-to-play game is developed by Tencent’s Timi studio and, involves maps, modes, weapons and characters from across the CoD universe, including the Black Ops and the Modern Warfare series. On Android, it weighs in at 74MB and is compatible with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and above, while on iOS, it is a massive 1.5GB, and requires iOS 9.0 or later. The game will be available only in the multiplayer mode and, will include classic maps, such as Nuketown, Crash and Hijacked. According to the game’s listing pages on the Play Store and the App Store, players can expect 10-player free-fo...

Techno Bhogi

Search This Blog