NPST secures UPI mandate from cooperative bank

By Vriti Gothi

Network People Services Technologies Limited (NPST) has secured a mandate from a large cooperative bank to deploy its UPI switching infrastructure, marking a strategic expansion of its Bank-in-a-Box platform into India’s cooperative banking segment.

The deal represents NPST’s first order under its Bank-in-a-Box offering within its UPI solutions suite, signalling early market traction for its plug-and-play model. The platform is designed to enable banks to deploy payment infrastructure with lower upfront costs while shifting to a recurring, SaaS-based revenue model for the provider.

Through the deployment, the cooperative bank will gain access to UPI switching capabilities, allowing it to enter the merchant acquiring ecosystem and expand digital payment acceptance across its network. This is expected to open up new fee-based revenue streams while strengthening digital engagement among its customer base.

The move reflects a broader trend in India’s payments landscape, where smaller and cooperative banks are increasingly looking to participate in the Unified Payments Interface ecosystem beyond basic remittance services. Merchant acquiring, in particular, has emerged as a key growth lever as digital payments adoption deepens across semi-urban and rural markets.

NPST’s Bank-in-a-Box platform, launched in 2025, is positioned as a modular digital banking stack combining payments processing, merchant acquiring capabilities across offline (QR, soundbox) and online channels, and AI-led fraud monitoring. It also includes a banking super app layer designed to unify multiple services into a single interface.

Deepak Chand Thakur, Co-founder and CEO of Network People Services Technologies Limited, said the initiative aims to address longstanding infrastructure barriers faced by cooperative banks.

“Cooperative banks are a critical pillar of India’s community banking ecosystem, and their participation is essential to deepening digital payment acceptance at the grassroots level,” he said. “NPST’s Bank-in-a-Box platform removes the technology barriers that have historically limited their participation.”

By targeting cooperative banks with a scalable, ready-to-deploy infrastructure model, NPST is positioning itself to capture a segment that has traditionally lagged in digital adoption but represents a significant opportunity as UPI usage continues to expand across India.