Bhubaneswar (Odisha) [India], October 25 : Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) newly inaugurated data centre in Bhubaneswar will add to India's domestic infrastructure capacity for critical payment systems, including Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT).
Speaking at the inauguration of the RBI's new Data Centre and Cyber Security Training Institute, Sitharaman highlighted the government's efforts to strengthen domestic data centre infrastructure.
"With this campus, the Reserve Bank adds to that capacity at home for the systems at the very heart of our payments," she said.
Highlighting government support for the sector, Sitharaman said, "Our government granted data centres infrastructure status in 2022, and in the Union Budget 2026-27, a tax holiday was announced for foreign companies providing global cloud services from data centres in India."
She said the new campus would support the RBI's mission-critical systems, including RTGS and NEFT, which facilitate large-value and retail fund transfers across the banking system.
RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra, who also addressed the event, said the new facility would strengthen the security and resilience of the central bank's critical financial systems.
"The new data centre will further enhance the capacity, resilience and security of our critical systems," Malhotra said.
Emphasising the importance of cybersecurity in maintaining public confidence in digital banking, he said, "Any system that is not secure cannot earn public trust."
Malhotra said the RBI has implemented frameworks covering IT governance, cyber resilience, outsourcing, third-party risks and digital payment security to safeguard the financial system.
He also highlighted the growing use of technology in the central bank's operations, including data analytics and supervisory technology tools to identify risks at an early stage.
The Governor said the new training institute would help develop skills among RBI officials and the wider banking and financial sector in cybersecurity, data science, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
"We are also encouraging artificial intelligence guided by accountability, fairness and explainability," he said.
Meanwhile, Sitharaman highlighted the rapid growth of India's digital payments ecosystem, saying that UPI has become the world's largest real-time payment system.
"Its annual volume has grown about 13,000 times since 2016-17, and it now carries over 2,400 crore transactions in a single month, or nearly 80 crore transactions each day," she said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the facility in the presence of Sitharaman, Malhotra and other dignitaries.