India becoming global ransomware capital

India is said to be fast becoming the ransomware capital of the world, with mounting cases of cyberattacks, Dilip Asbe, chief executive of the National Payments Council of India (NPCI), told us. He added that the only way to reduce these substantially was to tokenise all payment mechanisms, despite high initial costs.

-How NPCI is dealing with cyber attacks-
Addressing the issue on cyber attacks, Dilip Asbe said, “This is a super critical issue for the ecosystem. This is something that keeps us worried and awake. Recently I read that India is becoming or has become the Ransomware capital of the world, and most of these demands are in cryptocurrencies. The regulator has recently delivered a strong “tokenisation framework” which reduces the risk to almost zero for card payments, if the ecosystem adopts them effectively. While there may be some criticism that it may increase the consumer friction in short term, finally, if there is a large breach, the blame is always on the regulator.”

-30% market share cap for UPI apps-
He added, “The market share cap has been implemented keeping in mind the concentration risk while ensuring that it doesn’t hinder the growth of UPI to the extent possible. We still believe existing players such as Paytm, Amazon Pay and WhatsApp will increase their market shares in due course so that we don’t need to interfere or take any action to reduce or curtail the growth of UPI. Now, we also see that popular banks’ apps have been converted to full-fledged UPI apps.” CT Bureau