Glossary of short names

An RBI-licensed firm that moves a customer's financial data between institutions only with the customer's consent. It does not store the data.

Payments. See also FIP, FIU

The controls, monitoring and reporting that stop criminals using banks to disguise illegal money.

Banking and risk. See also CFT, PMLA

NPCI's system for sending government benefit payments to bank accounts linked to the recipient's Aadhaar number.

Payments

A defined way for one system to request data or actions from another.

Technology

An organisation permitted by UIDAI to use Aadhaar authentication to verify its customers.

Banking and risk. See also KUA, UIDAI

The UPI feature for recurring payments under a mandate the customer approves once, such as subscriptions or instalments.

Payments. See also NACH

An interoperable system for paying utility and other recurring bills through many channels.

Payments

The plan for keeping critical services running, or restoring them, during a disruption.

Technology. See also DR

A server layer built for one client, such as a mobile app, that shapes data from many services for that client.

Technology

NPCI's own UPI app.

Payments. See also UPI

The batch run that opens a new business date in a core banking system after end of day.

Banking and risk. See also EOD

A wholly owned subsidiary of RBI that prints banknotes at presses in Mysuru and Salboni.

Institution. See also RBI

Deposits in current and savings accounts, a low-cost source of funds for banks.

Banking and risk

Digital money issued by a central bank. RBI's version is the e-rupee.

Payments

The central system of record for a bank's customers, accounts, deposits, loans and general ledger.

Banking and risk. See also EOD, GL

The central counterparty for India's government securities, money market, forex and rupee derivative trades, authorised by RBI.

Institution. See also TREPS

Streaming every change made to a database so other systems can react to it or keep a copy up to date.

Technology. See also CQRS

A Government company that runs the central registry of security interests, so lenders can check whether a property already secures a loan.

Institution. See also CKYCRR

India's national agency for responding to cyber security incidents. Organisations, including banks, must report certain incidents to it.

Institution

Controls that stop money reaching terrorist groups, usually run alongside anti-money-laundering controls.

Banking and risk. See also AML

Automatically building and testing every change, and releasing it through a repeatable pipeline.

Technology

Usually a credit bureau licensed by RBI that holds borrowers' credit histories. In RBI rules it can also mean a core investment company, a type of NBFC.

Banking and risk

An RBI instruction issued to the entities it regulates, such as banks.

Regulatory instrument

A shared record of a customer's KYC details that regulated entities can reuse instead of collecting documents again.

Banking and risk. See also CKYCRR, KYC

The registry of central KYC records. The Government of India authorised CERSAI to run it; it went live in July 2016.

Banking and risk. See also CKYC, CERSAI

A design that handles writes and reads with separate models, so each can be optimised on its own.

Technology. See also CDC

A bank's capital as a share of its assets weighted by risk. RBI sets a minimum.

Banking and risk

The share of deposits a bank must keep as a balance with RBI.

Banking and risk. See also SLR

Tools that continuously check cloud accounts for risky settings and policy violations.

Technology

A report of large cash transactions that a bank files with FIU-IND under the PMLA rules.

Banking and risk. See also FIU-IND, STR

The system that clears cheques using scanned images instead of moving paper. Since October 2025 it clears continuously through the day.

Payments. See also MICR

A facility that houses servers, storage and networking equipment.

Technology. See also DR

A co-operative bank at district level that lends to primary agricultural credit societies.

Banking and risk. See also StCB

A wholly owned subsidiary of RBI that insures bank deposits, currently up to ₹5 lakh per depositor per bank.

Institution. See also RBI

Controls that detect and stop sensitive data leaving an organisation by email, upload or device.

Technology

India's law on the processing of digital personal data, including consent and the duties of organisations that hold such data.

Regulatory instrument. See also MeitY

The plans and systems for restoring service at another site after a major failure.

Technology. See also BCP, RPO, RTO

A central store of cleaned, integrated data used for reporting and analysis across an organisation.

Technology. See also ETL, OLAP

KYC completed by fetching identity details from UIDAI through Aadhaar authentication, with the customer's consent.

Banking and risk. See also UIDAI, KYC

The daily batch run in a core banking system that closes the business day: interest accrual, charges, ledger posting and reports.

Banking and risk. See also BOD, CBS

Middleware that connects many applications through a central hub, often translating messages between them.

Technology. See also API

Moving data from source systems, reshaping it and loading it into a warehouse or other store.

Technology. See also EDW

In the Account Aggregator system, an institution that holds a customer's data, such as a bank, and shares it on consent.

Payments. See also AA, FIU

In the Account Aggregator system, an institution that asks for a customer's data with consent, such as a lender. Not the same as FIU-IND.

Payments. See also AA, FIP, FIU-IND

The national agency that receives, analyses and shares reports of suspicious and large transactions under the PMLA. Not the same as FIU, a financial information user.

Institution. See also FIU, STR, CTR, PMLA

A council chaired by the Finance Minister that brings together India's financial regulators on stability and coordination.

Institution

Running systems so that a Git repository holds the desired state, and automation keeps the live system matched to it.

Technology. See also IaC

The bank's master set of accounts, where every transaction is recorded as debits and credits.

Banking and risk. See also CBS

A tamper-resistant device that stores cryptographic keys and performs operations such as PIN verification.

Technology

Defining servers, networks and other infrastructure in version-controlled files instead of setting them up by hand.

Technology. See also GitOps

An association of banks in India. With RBI, it set up NPCI.

Institution. See also NPCI

A society set up by RBI in 1996 in Hyderabad for research and training in banking technology. It built INFINET, SFMS and the National Financial Switch.

Institution. See also INFINET, SFMS, NFS

An 11-character code that identifies a bank branch for NEFT, RTGS and IMPS transfers.

Payments

A wholly owned subsidiary of RBI that runs INFINET, the banking sector's private network, and SFMS, the messaging system behind RTGS and NEFT.

Institution. See also SFMS, INFINET

NPCI's instant, round-the-clock interbank transfer service, used with an account number and IFSC or with a mobile number.

Payments. See also UPI, MMID

The closed, private network of the banking sector, launched in 1999 and now run by IFTAS.

Payments. See also SFMS, IFTAS

The regulator of India's insurance sector.

Institution

An international standard for richly structured financial messages, increasingly used for high-value and cross-border payments.

Payments. See also ISO 8583

An international standard for card and similar transaction messages, used by card networks and ATM switches.

Payments. See also ISO 20022

India's main law on electronic records, digital signatures and cyber offences.

Regulatory instrument. See also MeitY

Granting elevated access only when needed and only for a short time, instead of permanently.

Technology. See also PAM

An open-source system for running and scaling containerised applications across a cluster of machines.

Technology

A way to share Kotlin code between Android and iOS apps, now called Kotlin Multiplatform.

Technology

An organisation permitted by UIDAI to receive Aadhaar e-KYC data for its customers.

Banking and risk. See also AUA, UIDAI

The process of verifying a customer's identity and address, required before a bank or other regulated entity opens an account.

Banking and risk. See also CKYC, VKYC, eKYC

RBI's operations that lend to or absorb money from banks for short periods to steer short-term interest rates.

Banking and risk. See also MSF

A machine learning model trained on large amounts of text that can generate and interpret language.

Technology

An RBI document that consolidates its circulars on a subject as of a date.

Regulatory instrument. See also Master Direction

An RBI instrument that sets out all its rules on a subject in one place, updated whenever the rules change.

Regulatory instrument. See also Master Circular

The ministry responsible for the IT Act and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act.

Institution. See also IT Act, DPDP Act

The machine-readable line printed on a cheque that identifies the bank, branch and cheque number.

Payments. See also CTS

Practices for deploying, monitoring and updating machine learning models reliably in production.

Technology

A seven-digit number that, with a mobile number, identifies a bank account for IMPS transfers.

Payments. See also IMPS

An RBI window where banks can borrow overnight against government securities at a penal rate when other sources dry up.

Banking and risk. See also LAF

TLS in which both sides present certificates, so each proves its identity to the other.

Technology

A statutory development bank for agriculture and rural credit, wholly owned by the Government of India since RBI sold its last shares in 2019.

Institution. See also RRB, DCCB, StCB

NPCI's system for bulk and recurring payments, such as salaries, dividends and loan instalments collected under a mandate.

Payments. See also AutoPay

RBI's account-to-account transfer system. It settles in half-hourly batches, around the clock, in banks' accounts at RBI.

Payments. See also RTGS

NPCI's system for electronic toll payments using FASTag stickers on vehicles.

Payments

The network that lets a card from one bank work at another bank's ATM. Built by IDRBT, it has been run by NPCI since December 2009.

Payments. See also NPCI

A statutory body, wholly owned by the Government of India, that finances and promotes housing finance institutions and supervises housing finance companies.

Institution. See also RBI

A formal RBI publication that issues or amends regulations and directions.

Regulatory instrument

A loan on which interest or principal has stayed overdue beyond the period RBI sets.

Banking and risk

A not-for-profit company set up in 2008 as an initiative of RBI and the Indian Banks' Association, owned by banks. It runs retail payment systems such as UPI and the National Financial Switch.

Institution. See also UPI, NFS

Systems designed for analysing large volumes of data, such as reporting and dashboards.

Technology. See also OLTP, EDW

Systems that record many small transactions quickly and reliably, such as a core banking ledger.

Technology. See also OLAP

An RBI-authorised firm that collects payments on behalf of merchants and settles the money to them.

Payments. See also PG

Tools and controls that govern who can use powerful administrator accounts, and record what they do.

Technology. See also JIT access

RBI's framework that places restrictions on a weak bank until its capital, asset quality or profits recover.

Banking and risk

The regulator of pension funds in India, including the National Pension System.

Institution

Technology that routes online payment details between the customer, merchant and banks. It does not hold the funds.

Payments. See also PA

The law that requires banks and other reporting entities to keep records and report certain transactions to FIU-IND.

Regulatory instrument. See also FIU-IND, STR, CTR

A stored-value product, such as a wallet or gift card, loaded in advance and used to pay.

Payments

RBI's requirement that banks direct a share of lending to sectors such as agriculture, small business and weaker sections.

Banking and risk

In UPI, a bank that offers UPI to its customers or to a third-party app. More generally, any firm that provides payment services.

Payments. See also TPAP

The law under which RBI authorises and regulates payment systems in India.

Regulatory instrument. See also RBI, NPCI

A two-dimensional barcode. In Indian payments, a merchant QR code carries the details a UPI or card app needs to pay.

Payments

India's central bank. It regulates banks and payment systems, runs RTGS and NEFT, and holds the accounts in which banks settle with one another.

Institution. See also NPCI, DICGC

A wholly owned, not-for-profit subsidiary of RBI in Bengaluru that promotes financial innovation. It builds the Unified Lending Interface.

Institution. See also ULI

A wholly owned subsidiary of RBI that handles RBI's IT projects and cyber security, and supports its supervision of banks through security audits.

Institution. See also RBI

The most data, measured in time, that an organisation is prepared to lose when a system fails.

Technology. See also RTO, DR

A bank set up to serve rural areas, jointly owned by the Government of India, a state government and a sponsor bank.

Banking and risk. See also NABARD

RBI's system that settles each payment individually and immediately, on a gross basis, between banks.

Payments. See also NEFT

How quickly a system must be working again after a failure.

Technology. See also RPO, DR

India's domestic card network, run by NPCI, for debit, credit and prepaid cards.

Payments. See also NFS

The regulator of India's securities markets, including stock exchanges, brokers, depositories and mutual funds.

Institution

A bank licensed by RBI to focus on small businesses, small farmers and others with limited access to banking.

Banking and risk

The secure messaging system, launched in 2001 and now run by IFTAS, that carries RTGS, NEFT and government securities settlement messages.

Payments. See also IFTAS, INFINET

A system that collects security logs from many sources and raises alerts on suspicious patterns.

Technology. See also SOAR

The measurement used to judge a service against its objective, such as the share of successful payments.

Technology. See also SLO

A target for how reliable or fast a service should be, measured over a period.

Technology. See also SLI

The share of deposits a bank must hold in safe liquid assets such as government securities.

Banking and risk. See also CRR

Tools that automate responses to security alerts, such as isolating a machine or blocking an address.

Technology. See also SIEM

The apex co-operative bank in a state, above the district central co-operative banks.

Banking and risk. See also DCCB

A report a bank files with FIU-IND when a transaction looks suspicious under the PMLA.

Banking and risk. See also FIU-IND, CTR

The global cooperative network banks use to exchange cross-border payment and other financial messages.

Payments

A UPI app run by a company that is not a bank. It connects to UPI through one or more partner banks that act as payment service providers.

Payments. See also PSP, UPI

A measure of how many transactions a system handles each second.

Technology

RBI-authorised platforms where small businesses sell unpaid invoices owed by large buyers to financiers, to get paid sooner.

Payments

CCIL's platform for tri-party repo, a form of short-term borrowing against government securities.

Banking and risk. See also CCIL

A co-operative bank serving mainly urban and semi-urban areas.

Banking and risk

The authority that issues Aadhaar numbers and runs Aadhaar authentication and e-KYC.

Institution. See also eKYC, AUA, KUA

A platform built by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub that connects lenders to the data they need to assess and process loans.

Payments. See also RBIH

NPCI's real-time system for paying from a bank account with a UPI ID, QR code or phone number, through apps on a phone.

Payments. See also VPA, TPAP, PSP

UPI for feature phones, used through voice calls, missed calls, simple apps or sound-based payments.

Payments. See also UPI

A small on-device balance for quick, low-value UPI payments without entering the UPI PIN each time. See NPCI for current limits.

Payments. See also UPI

Customer identification carried out over a live video call with an official of the regulated entity.

Banking and risk. See also KYC

A UPI ID, such as name@bank, that stands in for an account number and IFSC.

Payments. See also UPI

A filter in front of web applications that blocks common attacks on web traffic.

Technology