The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and Indian multinational tech company Muse Wearables have teamed up to introduce the country’s first wearable payments ecosystem, which will be supported by Muse Wallet and NPCI’s reliable RuPay network.
The new ecosystem eliminates the need for a phone, card, or wallet by enabling users to touch their fashionable Smart Ring “Ring One” on any NFC-enabled point-of-sale terminal to conduct quick, safe payments. With RuPay, Muse Wallet, which is already operational in more than 40 countries and accepts cards from almost 600 banks, expands its global platform to India, enabling millions of users—including those in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities—to easily and securely make digital payments.
Muse Wearables is a 200-person deep-tech team that designs and manufactures innovative products that are aesthetically pleasing, useful, and profoundly human. The company is based in Bangalore and has operations in the USA, Europe, and other countries.
You may watch and download a demo video of this contactless payment system by clicking on this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ew6r1cf-9wH2r3cavWLsksLu6nmLKILb/view?usp=sharing
Muse’s wearables and payments technology, which are entirely created, designed, and produced in India, together constitute a true “Make in India, Made for the World” accomplishment.
“We are taking on foreign tech giants in the digital wallet ecosystem by creating a truly sovereign alternative for India,” stated Mr. K.L.N. Sai Prasanth, Co-Founder and CEO of Muse Wearables, emphasising the necessity for domestic wallet systems. This demonstrates that top-notch technology can be developed in India. We are simplifying cashless payments with Muse Wallet. We want to make wearable payments convenient for millions of RuPay cardholders over the course of the next two years.
Mr. K.L.N. Sai Prasanth went on to say, “Muse Wearables is pleased to introduce Ring One and Muse Wallet, India’s first Secure Element Tokenisation Platform, with the assistance of reliable partners like NPCI and RuPay. I am really appreciative of LivQuik as our first issuer partner, the NPCI and RuPay teams for their vision and cooperation, and Infineon for their priceless technological relationship. I want to express my gratitude to the amazing staff at Muse Wearables for making this happen.
MUSE WALLET
Muse Wallet, a deep-tech payments platform that uses a Secure Element integrated into Ring One to enable tokenised, hardware-level transactions, is at the centre of this ecosystem. It is the first Secure Element Tokenisation Platform in India, created in collaboration with RuPay and NPCI to satisfy international PCI and EMV security requirements.
Any RuPay credit or debit card can be transformed into a safe digital token using Muse Wallet and kept inside a safe Element (SE) chip, which has the same level of hardware protection as bank cards and passports. This guarantees that important credentials are completely isolated from the phone’s apps or operating system. In order to make this new payment method genuinely commonplace, Muse Wearables has already started onboarding issuing banks onto Muse Wallet and plans to support all issuers in India.
Ms. Prathyusha Kamarajugadda, Co-Founder and COO of Muse Wearables, explained the technology underlying the product, saying, “Our vision has always been to merge wellness, security, and convenience in one beautiful form factor.” We are creating the first Secure Element Tokenisation Platform in India with Muse Wallet, which will allow users to connect any RuPay card and make quick payments with just a ring tap. It is an honour to witness an Indian-born concept become a new standard for personal technology around the world.
“The response to Muse Ring One Payments has been amazing on a global scale,” said Mr. Sahil Ajay Choudhary, Vice President – Global Business, Muse Wearables. We currently operate in 600 banks across 40 countries on the Mastercard network. We are now offering India the same top-notch experience thanks to RuPay integration. We extend an invitation to all banking partners and issuers to join us in creating the upcoming generation of contactless payments. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to NPCI, our strategic partner, for their vision, flexibility, and outstanding assistance in making this launch possible.
How it operates:
➢ Customers can manually enter or scan their RuPay card on the Muse App.
➢ Muse Wallet generates a unique token for each card by interacting with the issuer bank and the Rupay card network.
➢ The token is encrypted and saved after being safely sent to the Secure Element within Ring One.
➢ The Secure Element completes the transaction without ever disclosing the real card number when the ring is tapped at an NFC terminal.
➢ Muse Wallet is a new standard for wearable security in India because of its hardware-level isolation.
➢ Only when the ring is worn do payments function; taking it off immediately stops transactions. Without the verified context, the token is inert and useless in the event that the ring is lost or stolen.
➢ Muse’s Secure Element stack, which combines hardware, firmware, and cloud infrastructure constructed in accordance with international banking requirements, is fully designed internally.
Muse Wearables is a cutting-edge consumer electronics firm that specialises in creating wearables, smart rings, and AI interfaces that seamlessly integrate intelligent interaction, payments, and health into daily life. The startup changes how people connect with technology, make transactions, and keep an eye on their well-being by combining hardware, software, AI, and fintech into a single platform.
In order to establish a strong Payment and Settlement Infrastructure in India, the RBI and Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) launched the NPCI, an umbrella organisation for running retail payments and settlement systems in the country.