Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest 2023 (GFF 2023), T Koshy, CEO, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) talked about the role of ONDC in governance and trust building in the digital commerce ecosystem. The discussion between Noopur Chaturvedi, CEO, NPCI Bharat BillPay Limited and Suresh Sethi, MD and CEO, Protean eGov Technologies, centrered on the potential of digital commerce in India and the opportunities and challenges it posed for economic growth. 

On building a trusted national infrastructure and maintaining governance in the absence of a traditional ‘regulator’, T Koshy said, “ONDC comes in as a network administrator. We facilitate a lot more transparency on how network participants connect with each other. At ONDC, we have put together certain mechanisms that every participant has to adhere to, irrespective of their size. Our legally binding network participant agreement is watertight and has to be signed by each partner registering on our platform. The ‘Network Policies’ which are essentially the rules of participation for all ecosystem players are continuously evolved collaboratively with representatives of the ecosystem players are an inherent component of the Network Participant Agreement. Finally, the buyers and sellers agree on terms and conditions for the transaction through a digitally signed contract.”

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Elaborating on the specifications that were considered when building technology for ONDC, Suresh Sethi said, “When building for ONDC, two aspects were considered. The Gateway and the system for reconciliation and settlement. Since ONDC was democratising digital commerce, privacy and trust by design and equal access was a priority.” 

Further, T Koshy shared his vision on ONDC, and maintained that every product or service that was catalogueable should be integrated into the ONDC Network.

GFF 2023 is supported by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) and is organized by the Payments Council of India (PCI), Fintech Convergence Council (FCC), and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The event was inaugurated by Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance, Government of India.