After launching a public tech platform last month for frictionless credit delivery, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is mulling handing it over to a private company as it did with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). 

Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday said the central bank led the initiative and is involved on a day-to-day basis with it as that requires multi-agency coordination like accessing land records from states' revenue departments and satellite data.

"... broadly, the idea is eventually we want to make it an open architecture. We do the open platform, we will gradually withdraw and hand it over to a private company like RBI did in the case of NPCI and it will be an open architecture on which any bank or NBFC can onboard," Das said.

Under the frictionless platform initiative, banks are extending loans like the Kisan credit cards in under 10 minutes.

According to Das, the banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) can continue with their lending activities even after RBI hands over the platform.

The RBI chief said the platform was launched in select districts of two states in September 2022 and the pilot has enabled successful disbursal of up to Rs 1.6 lakh per borrower sans any collateral in a matter of few minutes as against the six weeks taken earlier with multiple visits to bank branches.