NPCI had allocated Rs 93 crore budget (excluding taxes) for media strategy, planning, and buying through an RFP issued last year
Madison World has won the media mandate for the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Storyboard18 can confirm.
NPCI, which operates as an umbrella organization for retail payments and settlement systems in India, was established as an initiative of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) under the provisions of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
The organization issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) last year to empanel a digital media agency for comprehensive media strategy, planning, and buying services. The budget allocated for this mandate was Rs 93 crore (excluding taxes).
In its RFP documentation, NPCI highlighted a key challenge: “While the rise of UPI and digital payments has revolutionized the financial ecosystem, it has also led to a surge in transactional frauds with scammers increasingly targeting unsuspecting users.”
This new partnership comes after Dentsu’s previous tenure with NPCI, having been awarded the media mandate in 2016.
In recent developments, NPCI announced that starting February 1, all Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions with IDs containing special characters will be rejected by the central system. This policy change aims to enhance technical standardization and ensure uniformity across UPI operations, which have become a cornerstone of India’s digital payment ecosystem.
Last year, NPCI also unveiled its new brand positioning, ‘Always Forward,’ emphasizing the organization’s belief that digital financial transactions serve as crucial drivers of both individual and national progress, empowering millions of Indians to advance “one transaction at a time.”
