Vajra Blockchain-Based Payment Platform Launched by India

Overview-

• India has announced Vajra blockchain-based payment platform.
• NCPI aims to support more banks, and currently, it supports 56 banks.

India might still consider cryptocurrencies alegal, but it has been embracing the blockchain technology for the benefit of the industry. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under the guidance of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Bank Association (IBA) has now officially introduced India’s permissioned blockchain-based payment platform Vajra for making payment easy, better and transparent.

Vajra architecture-
To avail of the blockchain network, the interested party should get registered under the network administrator. The architecture of Vajra blockchain-based payment platform consists of three nodes on the platform.

• Clearing House Node– This is the admin node and has all the admin rights and is maintained by the NPCI. It provides the root-authority-signed TLS certificate from the network’s permissions service to Participant nodes.
• Notary Node– It receives the transactions from the Clearing House Node and validates the transactions based on the Aadhar biometric authentications.
• Participant Node– The nodes post, receive and view the transactions, and these nodes represent the banks.

Features of Vajra-

1. Vajra platform uses the notifications or otherwise can be called the distributed ledger transaction (DLT) message for handling the communication between the nodes.
2. The node authenticates all interactions with the external participants, and all other data access are secured and made risk free.
3. Everything is transparent, meaning all the transactions, complaints, queries, technical errors, etc. is all kept in track.
4. The admin nodes authenticate all nodes on the platform, strict rules are followed to add any new nodes.
5. There is a list of protocols built to ensure proper security and privacy of the nodes on the Vajra platform.

Advantages of using Vajra-

1. Faster and efficient processing of the transactions with the implementation of the cryptography.
2. Negligible or zero risks of error.
3. All transactions are transparent, which helps in providing real-time visibility to the transactions
4. Data security and a robust dispute mechanism.
5. A quick fix of the real-time queries, technical errors, complaints, etc.

For now, NCPI has 56 banks as shareholders that are supported by State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank, and HSBC. NCPI wants to support more banks and aims to become “the best payment network globally.”