India launches Vajra, the Blockchain-based Payment Platform

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has now officially revealed a blockchain-based payments platform named as "Vajra".

A Distributed Ledger system for automated payment, clearing & settlement offers highly secure and tamper-evident transactions.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India. NPCI is an initiative of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007, for creating a robust Payment & Settlement Infrastructure in India.

The platform is said to have been designed to automate the process of settling and clearing payments for NPCI transactions.

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In a whitepaper titled, Vajra Platform, a Distributed Ledger System, NPCI said, "After an initial assessment, the DLT based system has been designed for automating payment clearing and settlement processes of NPCI products. The platform is named as ‘Vajra Platform’. A permissioned network will be set up 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 payment processing industry, permissionless blockchain systems were not considered."

Blockchain Platform, 'Vajra' in Brief

Vajra, a Private Blockchain is a permissioned blockchain network include three types of nodes, which include the Clearing House node, the Notary node, and the participant node.


The Clearing House Node will have admin rights for the platform and will be maintained by the organization itself.

As for the Notary node, it will receive transactions only from the Clearing House node and will only validate transactions in case Adhar biometric is used for authentication.

Finally, the participant node will include all banks, payment gateways, and financial institutions, which enable them to post, receive and view transactions on the platform.

The new technology is animated at bringing real-time visibility into transactions, thus reducing disputes and improving back end operations at banks. The organization says that the decentralized platform will also help to reduce the pain of reconciliation across all the participants.

Vajra project is as of now supported by 56 private and public sector banks in India which include the State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank, Citibank, HSBC, Bank of India, Union Bank of India and HDF Bank.

Blockchain seems to gain lots of momentum in India. BSES as of now recently revealed a Blockchain platform for solar power trading while on the other hand, India's TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) is also planning to leverage blockchain to block spam.