Saket Modi: an ethical hacker assisting RBI’s initiative

Saket Modi, a 25 years old tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Lucideus Tech is garnering a lot of media attention these days.Of course, he deserves every bit of it. Modi and a dozen techies at his company have been spending several sleepless nights as the Reserve Bank of India and commercial banks were preparing for the launch of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Saket Modi’s Lucideus Tech is among cyber security experts that were hired to keep hackers off the technology that allows easier transfer of money between bank account using smartphones and touted to be the biggest development since ATM.
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is an app through which RBI and major banks are creating a mini-bank on our smartphones.

“UPI isn’t a step but a leap forward. It will set a new benchmark for the world to follow. We feel proud and privileged to contribute our bit and be a part of this revolution,” Modi, CEO of Lucideus, told ET from London.

Through UPI, customers will be able to transfer money from one account to another without adding the beneficiary, also saving themselves from punching in IFSC code, account number or bank’s branch name.

“There are multiple layers of security checks implemented when any transaction occurs on a bank’s mobile application using UPI. This is not just in between the user and the app but also between the banks, merchant and the UPI engine,” Modi told ET.

New Delhi-based Lucideus, which has been working on the project for three months, will continue to look after the payment gateway’s security for the next few years, he said.Along with this project, Modi is also working with many billion-dollar startups in India.

Nearly 19 banks have already joined the UPI platform and many more are expected to come aboard soon.

N Rajendran, Chief Technology Officer, NPCI told ET, “NPCI systems are secured with state of the art security infrastructure with continuous monitoring and best practices. NPCI follows integrated approach to protect various NPCI product’s infrastructure and engages with various external information security industries for building secured products for the payments ecosystem.”