Amazon Pay, Paytm, PhonePe and 16 other companies become NPCI shareholders

NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) released a statement on 26 November disclosing that it has widened its shareholder base, which sets the valuation of the entity at Rs 1,763 crore. It has done this by completing the private placement of 4.63 percent of its equity shares worth Rs 81.64 crore. Some of the 19 new shareholders include Amazon Pay, Paytm Payments Bank, PhonePe, Mobiwik, Pine Labs, Standard Chartered Bank and PayU. This takes the total number of shareholders to 67. This comes after the total number of UPI transactions had crossed the 2 billion mark in last month, October 2020. [caption id=“attachment_6204781” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Advertisements of Paytm, a digital wallet company, are seen placed at stalls. Reuters[/caption] According to the latest shareholding pattern, as of 26 November, including the new additions, Amazon Pay India, PayU Payments. PhonePe, Pine Labs, Paytm Payments Bank, IDFC First Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, etc, have 0.44 percent shareholding each while MobiKwik and India Post Payments Bank, have 0.04 percent holding each. Union Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank hold the highest stake with 9.15 percent, whereas Canara Bank holds 8.14 percent share. Lenders including State Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, HSBC and Citibank, each hold 7.12 percent stake. “This broad basing exercise was done to further diversify and distribute the NPCI shareholding to a larger set of the RBI regulated entities and categories of payment industry participants. NPCI made an offer for the private placement to 131 RBI regulated entities, out of which 19 evinced interest and were allotted shares in NPCI. With this shareholding expansion, NPCI gets on-board some of the leading banks, new categories of banks and the RBI authorised non-bank entities,” NPCI said in a statement. “We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this exercise and the confidence expressed in NPCI’s continued growth and larger purpose. With this we have also broad-based our shareholding to include new categories like payment banks, small finance banks and payment system operators in addition to existing public sector, private sector, foreign, cooperative and regional rural banks,” said Rupesh H Acharya, Chief of Finance, NPCI.