Let UPI flourish while we mull a digital rupee

In some form or another, cryptocurrency is here to stay, and grapple with it, we must. The latest to weigh in on the concept is Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman of Infosys and a vocal advocate of digital technologies being put to public use. Speaking at an event on Tuesday, he said most current cryptos could be useful as stores of value, like gold, but not for transactions. In India, as he elaborated, we already have digital payments done efficiently by our Unified Payments Interface (UPI), an advanced platform for bank transfers set up by the National Payments Corp of India (NPCI) that has caught on very well since it got going in 2016.