Back in 2016, when its infrastructure was in the pilot stage, UPI had 21 banks. Currently, around 174 banks are live on UPI. Moreover, as per a report by the NPCI, the number of transactions reported on UPI for the month of August 2020 was 1.62 billion.

This number is a clear indication of the success and growth that UPI has witnessed since its inception. The foundation of any infrastructure plays a huge role in its success, and the foundation of UPI was laid by National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) with the support of regulators such as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under the initiative of the Government of India. Also, all these bodies are a vital part of the financial ecosystem of India.

In the upcoming video, you will learn about these three bodies in detail. However, before watching the video, kindly go through the following video in case you are not familiar with the term ‘KYC’.

KYC- Know Your Customer

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In this video, you learnt about the trimurty of entities that forms the financial ecosystem of India. It is as follows:

Government: Initiatives taken by the government are as follows:
- JAM trinity: It stands for ‘Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile trinity’. It was started with the motive to ensure that every adult citizen in the country has access to a bank account, can prove their identity with their Aadhaar number and has their phone number linked to their bank account and Aadhar. The objective was to stop misuse of government subsidies. Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) is a scheme that leverages the India Stack infrastructure (uses Aadhar for identity verification) and is built on the JAM trinity model (uses Aadhar to verify identity and transfer the subsidy to the bank account of the beneficiary).
- India Stack: It provides an open API infrastructure to the banks and other tech players to build their application.
NPCI: NPCI is an umbrella organisation that was created by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to enable seamless mobile payments between multiple banks via UPI.
- It has built a public infrastructure in the digital payments space: Unified payments interface (UPI). UPI brings multiple banks on a single platform and allows the transfer of money between these banks round the clock. Other than UPI, NPCI has been instrumental in releasing products like AePS, BBPS, and BHIM.
Regulators such as RBI (The Reserve Bank of India), SEBI (The Securities and Exchange Board of India and IRDA (The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India):
- They have created sandboxes, which are small-scale experiments to test the efficacy of new technologies. If an experiment is successful, then it is allowed to be launched in the larger market.
  - A regulatory sandbox is a framework set up by a regulator that allows finTech start-ups and other innovators to conduct live experiments in a controlled environment under a regulator's supervision.
- They have also launched innovation hubs to facilitate ideas such as video-Know Your Customer (KYC) and e-KYC.

Now that you have gained some understanding of the trimurty of the Indian financial ecosystem, in the next video, you will learn in detail about the specific contributions of trimurty to ensure financial inclusion in India.

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In this video, you learn about the specific contributions of the trimurty as mentioned below:

Government: India Stack has the following four layers:

Layer	Description
Presenceless	It gives you a means to establish your identity without being present in person using a universal biometric digital identity. Example: You can use your Aadhaar number and biometric of your thumb registered in the Aadhaar card to establish your identity anywhere.
Paperless	It allows you to carry documents in digital form, which are as good as being attested or verified by the original issuing authority. Example: You can store your documents, e-sign them on DigiLockerand use them to establish your identity without having to present your hard copy for the same.
Cashless	It ensures that there is a set of APIs that are leveraging interoperable architecture to give you a cashless society. Example: By using UPI-enabled applications such as BHIM, you can use your mobile phones to make payments by simply scanning the QR codes or entering the phone number of the recipient.
NBFC Account Agregator (NBFC-AA)	It helps in getting the consolidated purview of the financial holdings of a user that is scattered in different places and is under different regulators. It allows the data to move securely. Example: If you have applied for a loan in HDFC Bank and already have a loan from Axis Bank and also have stocks with Zerodha, then your consolidated holdings can be accessed by HDFC Bank through an NBFC AA given you provide your consent for sharing it.

Regulators: Initiatives taken by the regulators are:

Initiative	Description
Payments Banks	Regulators have introduced payments banks to provide small savings accounts, remittances and transfer facilities to migrant workers, low-income households, etc., to increase financial inclusion in India through a secure, tech-driven environment. Example: Airtel Payments Bank and Paytm Bank
Differentiated Banks	Regulators have introduced differentiated banks to target niche segments and make tailored products to cater to the customers needs. Example: Bandhan Banks
Small Finance Banks	Regulators have introduced small finance banks to supply credit to micro and small enterprises and unorganised sectors to increase financial inclusion. Example: AU Small Finance Bank

NPCI:
- IMPS and UPI were introduced by NPCI.
- RuPay: It is a payment gateway parallel to Visa and Mastercard that can be used for domestic transactions
- Bharat Bill Payment System and Aadhaar Enabled Payment System:

Initiative	Description
Bharat Bill Payment System(BBPS)	It is a single platform that integrates different billers and lets the users pay their bills using a single platform from anywhere and anytime.
Aadhaar enabled Payment System (AePS)	It is an Aadhaar-based payment system that enables you to pay to any merchant without actually using any cards or wallets. There is an AePS machine that lets you enter your Aadhaar number and verify the number with your thumb impression on that machine. Once the impression is verified, the bank account linked to that Aadhar number is used, and the payment is deducted. It is one of the payment modes available on the BBPS platform.

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Now that you have learnt about the building blocks of the financial ecosystem in India and their contributions, in the next segment, you will take a look at several B2B-finTech players in India.