US firm FIS rates Immediate Payment Service as best global fin-tech innovation

India’s Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) has been rated the best global fin-tech innovation this year by Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS), a US-based financial services technology company.

IMPS beat technologies from the US and other developed countries, as well as those of China, according to the report by FIS, which considered 40 real-time payment systems across the world. 

The ranking was based on the system’s standard, published application programming interface (API), and strong participation from third-party vendors, according to the FIS report. (API is code that allows two programs to communicate with each other.) FIS also considered the comprehensiveness of the project and how well it met the needs of consumers and corporate customers.

Both Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and IMPS have been developed by National Payments Corporation of India. 

The daily transaction volume on IMPS has surged to 2.8 million per day this year, from two million per day in 2017. IMPS has also allowed chatting on money transfer apps.

FIS' research found that overlay services like chat, retail apps, instant loans, open APIs and more encourage consumers and businesses to use real-time payments.

Twelve other programmes received 4+ or 4 ratings in this year’s index by FIS. The American financial services technology company serves more than 20,000 clients and employs more than 52,000 people worldwide, 13,000 of them in India. It has operations and development offices in Gurugram, Bengaluru, Pune and Chennai.