Axis Bank to co-lead NUE with Amazon, Visa as partners

Leading private sector lenders ICICI Bank NSE -1.58 % and Axis Bank NSE 0.30 % have tied up with global e-commerce major Amazon and cards major Visa to launch a retail payments entity, which will be a rival to state-owned NPCI, officials said on Wednesday.Concerns over concentration risk and a need to fast-track cashless payments had led the RBI to invite applications for a New Umbrella Entity (NUE) to rival the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which currently delivers services like UPI-based payments.
According to media reports, this has led to a huge interest among various entities to get into the fray by forming consortia. These include one where Reliance Industries has tied up with Facebook and Google, another led by Paytm which has companies like Ola, while there is one led by the Tata Group with Mastercard, Bharti Airtel, Kotak Mahindra Bank and HDFC Bank as partners.