Daily Brief

DPI Brief — July 29, 2026 NPCI Mandates UPI Phone Number Masking by September 4 The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has directed all UPI apps and partner banks to mask users’ phone numbers during transactions, moving toward username-based handles as the default identifier. The mandate, first reported by NewsBytes and confirmed by Moneycontrol, is being positioned as a compliance measure under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. Currently, UPI apps display full phone numbers of both sender and receiver during transactions — a practice that exposes personal data to bystanders and screenshots. NPCI is in active discussions with banks and third-party app providers (PhonePe, Google Pay, Paytm, etc.) to implement the change. The shift to handles (like user@paytm) as the primary UPI identifier has been on the cards for years, but this is the first time NPCI has set a hard deadline. This is a meaningful privacy upgrade for India’s 400 million+ UPI users. ...

DPI Brief — July 28, 2026 Nilekani-Led Task Force to Build Leak-Proof Exam System (L1 + L6) Prime Minister Modi constituted a six-member high-powered task force on July 26, chaired by Aadhaar architect and former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, to recommend technology-driven reforms for India’s public examination system. The panel includes former ISRO chairman S. Somanath, ex-Intelligence Bureau director Arvind Deka, former IIT Madras director V. Kamakoti, former Union Education Secretary Anita Karwal, and senior bureaucrat Amrit Lal Meena. ...

DPI Brief — July 27, 2026 Nilekani Task Force: Aadhaar Architect Returns to Fix India’s Exam System Layer: L6 (Governance) + L1 (Identity) Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a high-powered task force on examination reforms, appointing Nandan Nilekani — the founding chairman of UIDAI and architect of Aadhaar — as its head. The move comes after days of nationwide “Cockroach Janata Party” protests over the NEET 2026 paper leak, which forced the cancellation of the medical entrance exam for 2 million students and was linked to over a dozen student suicides. ...

DPI Brief — July 26, 2026 Digital Agriculture Mission Reaches 5.28 Crore Farmers Layer: L5 — Sectoral (AgriStack) Union Minister Ramnath Thakur informed the Rajya Sabha that the Digital Agriculture Mission has now reached 5.28 crore farmers across India. The initiative deploys AI, machine learning, blockchain, IoT, and robotics to modernise Indian agriculture. Key components include the National Pest Surveillance System for AI-powered crop protection, IMD weather advisories integrated into farm decision-making, and the BharatVistaar platform for geospatial agricultural data. States and Union Territories are being supported in implementing these technologies under the centrally sponsored scheme. This scale of farmer coverage represents a significant milestone in India’s push to build AgriStack — the digital agriculture infrastructure layer that aims to create farmer registries, crop sowing data, and a unified platform for agricultural services. ...

DPI Brief — July 24, 2026 ONDC Hits Record 12 Million Monthly Orders in July The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) has scaled to a fresh all-time high of 12 million orders in July, with daily orders peaking at approximately 430,000. Of these, 4.4 million orders came from the mobility domain, while the remaining 7.6 million were from non-mobility segments — food and beverages (1.7 million), grocery (1.4 million), and fashion (0.6 million), with the balance spread across on-network logistics, beauty and personal care, home and kitchen, and retail vouchers. The network now encompasses roughly 630,000 sellers and service providers across 600 cities, delivering to 1,200 cities nationwide. Separately, ONDC appointed Rohit Lohia as Chief Business Officer, bringing fintech and e-commerce experience to strengthen the open commerce ecosystem. ...

DPI Brief — July 23, 2026 L2: UPI Crosses 55.5 Crore Users, ₹314 Lakh Crore in FY26 Transactions The government informed the Lok Sabha that UPI user base reached 55.49 crore as of June 2026, with FY26 processing 24,161.69 crore transactions worth ₹314.23 lakh crore — up 30% in volume and 20.6% in value over FY25 (₹260.56 lakh crore). Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary outlined security measures including risk-based transaction limits by RBI and NPCI. The data was shared in response to a parliamentary question covering state-wise user adoption and fraud mitigation steps. ...

DPI Brief — July 22, 2026 Supreme Court Directs CBSE to Implement APAAR Opt-Out Nationwide The Supreme Court on July 20 said it will direct the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to implement the Orissa High Court’s December 2025 judgment requiring the APAAR (Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry) consent form to explicitly offer parents the option to refuse Aadhaar-linking and opt out of the scheme. The Court noted that the Centre did not challenge the Orissa HC order, effectively accepting it. Petitioners had argued that the APAAR scheme effectively compels Aadhaar enrollment for students, raising serious privacy and data protection concerns. While the Court stopped short of striking down the scheme, it directed CBSE to “examine the issues” around parental consent and data safeguards. APAAR — a DPI layer-adjacent identity initiative that creates a permanent academic account linked to Aadhaar — now faces sharpened scrutiny as India’s DPDP Act gradually takes effect. The case is a bellwether for how consent and data minimisation obligations will be enforced on Aadhaar-linked government schemes. (MediaNama, Times of India) ...

DPI Brief — July 21, 2026 UPI MDR Debate Resurfaces as June Transaction Volume Hits 22.7 Billion India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processed 22.72 billion transactions worth ₹28.92 lakh crore in June 2026, according to NPCI data released this week. The 731 banks live on UPI continue to drive volume, but the surge has reignited a long-standing debate on sustainability. The government is actively considering reintroducing the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on select UPI transactions — a fee that was zeroed out in January 2020 to accelerate adoption. Under the proposal being discussed, an MDR of below 0.5% would apply only to merchants with annual turnover of approximately ₹1-1.5 crore, and only for transactions exceeding ₹2,000. Person-to-person transfers and small merchants would remain unaffected. Banks and payment service providers have long argued that the zero-MDR regime makes infrastructure costs unsustainable at current volumes, though a final decision from the Centre is pending. ...

DPI Brief — July 20, 2026 UPI MDR May Return for Large Merchants (L2: Payments) The government is actively examining a proposal to reintroduce the Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) on UPI transactions for large merchants, marking a potential shift in India’s zero-fee digital payments policy after nearly six years. According to a report in the Economic Times, the levy — pegged at below 0.5% — would apply only to merchants with annual turnover of ₹1–1.5 crore or more, and only on transactions above ₹2,000. Person-to-person transfers and payments to small merchants would remain free. ...

DPI Brief — July 19, 2026 NTA Finalises DigiLocker Integration for Old NEET Scorecards (L3 — Documents) The National Testing Agency (NTA) has informed the Chief Information Commission (CIC) that a DigiLocker-based mechanism to retrieve previous years’ NEET scorecards is in its final stages of development. The move came during an RTI hearing filed by a NEET-UG 2020 candidate who needed a certified old scorecard for FMGE eligibility verification via the National Board of Examinations. Currently, NTA destroys older records after 90 days, leaving thousands of medical aspirants without access to their own exam documents. The DigiLocker integration will allow candidates to retrieve authenticated scorecards after proper identity verification — a significant expansion of DigiLocker’s role beyond academic marksheet storage into standardized test documentation. This sets a precedent that could extend to other national-level examinations. ...