RBI made UPI a public good by keeping it low cost and accessible: Infosys founder Narayana Murthy

Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy has highlighted the Reserve Bank of India’s pivotal role in shaping India’s digital payments ecosystem by enabling the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a low-cost, accessible public good. Murthy said the RBI’s approach helped build trust among users by keeping UPI affordable and easy to access. “RBI has been a catalytic, kind, wise and eternal enabler. It has made UPI a public good by making it less expensive for users and accessible,” he said, adding that well-intentioned leadership with high aspirations can help transform a nation.

Murthy was speaking at a fireside chat at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore with Balakrishnan Mahadevan, a postdoctoral fellow at the institute, during the launch of Mahadevan’s book, Designing Change: My Journey Through Digital Payments Transformation. The event was hosted by the Centre for Digital Public Goods.

Leadership, values and compassionate capitalism

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Highlighting the role of leadership in institution building, Murthy stressed that values must be demonstrated through action, not rhetoric. “If you want to build an organisation with strong values and want to protect the dignity of every employee, you, as a leader, has to walk the talk. Value will not come from speeches, but from actions. Values, discipline, strong leadership and compassionate capitalism will take the society or country forward,” he said.

Urging students and young entrepreneurs to embrace austerity, Murthy added that leaders should lead simple lives without any vulgar display of wealth. “You, the future leaders, are the evangelists of compassionate capitalism, who will take the society or country forward. That will encourage entrepreneurship as well,” he told the students.

Technology is perishable, institutions are not

During the discussion, Murthy underlined the need to document India’s digital transformation journey, describing technology as inherently transient. “Technology is a perishable commodity. Till now, India has been following an oral tradition, as against a written one, in terms of documentation of organisational progress,” he said.

He noted that details about institution building including sacrifices, challenges, leadership failures, teamwork complexities and working at the cutting edge of technology are critical for future generations. “But how institutions are built, the sacrifices, challenges and constraints involved, the foibles of leaders, complexity of working in teams, how working on the leading edge of technology is, how contributions to society are made, are valuable information,” Murthy said.

“All these will add to the compendium of institutional memory, and the foundations of India’s progress will rest on such key knowledge and information by modern authors,” he added.

Public code, low cost and innovation

Murthy also highlighted the importance of keeping digital infrastructure open and affordable to prevent monopolies. According to him, the most important lesson from India’s digital payments success was making the code public and low cost. “This will prevent monopoly and create the platform for innovation. Combining innovation with sturdy foundation needs top quality leaders,” he said.

Scale achieved, resilience the next goal

Speaking on the future of India’s digital payments ecosystem, Murthy said the focus must now shift from scale to resilience. “Leaders have already given significant importance to scale, now the focus should be on resilience how to make the system safe, prevent leakages, enhance accuracy and boost the trust of users. Every citizen should come under the umbrella that way. We must continue to provide safe and inexpensive population scale system and prevent digital stratification,” he said.

Payments as public infrastructure

Reflecting on the book, Mahadevan said India’s digital payments success stemmed from treating payments as public infrastructure. He noted that India’s payments systems were designed to be open, interoperable, low cost and built for scale, adding that these outcomes were the result of deliberate design and policy decisions taken consistently over several years.

Murthy, who has also written the foreword to the book and is a former Chairman of the National Payments Corporation of India, said the book stood out for its focus on teamwork, discipline and institution building in a rapidly evolving technological environment.

“Documenting institutional memory, covering how to work in a team in the realm of rapidly changing technology, how to reach the pinnacle of our aspirations through hard work, smartness and discipline, are elements of the book that deserve special mention,” he said.