As of 9:00 PM IST, Sunday 25 October 2026. Based on reports by PTI (via Business Standard and Hindustan Times), ANI, Business Standard and The Economic Times on the inauguration this evening. The RBI has not published the facility's computing capacity or a date for when payment systems will run from it.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday evening inaugurated the Reserve Bank of India's new ₹169-crore data centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute near Bhubaneswar in Odisha. The facility will host what the government calls "mission-critical" payment and settlement systems. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said these include RTGS and NEFT, the systems banks use to move money between accounts.
Modi used the event to warn that future conflicts may target a country's economy as well as its military, and that India's banking system must be protected from cyberattacks.
The facility at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Location | Info Valley-II, Jatni, near Bhubaneswar, Odisha |
| Cost | ₹169 crore (as reported by PTI) |
| Area | 18.55 acres |
| Foundation stone | 22 March 2023, laid by then RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das |
| Role | The RBI's second data centre after Navi Mumbai, hosting payment and settlement systems |
| Training institute | Cybersecurity, data science, cloud computing and AI training for the RBI and the wider financial sector |
Why a second data centre matters
Payments between banks, including large-value RTGS transfers and NEFT, are settled on the RBI's systems. If the RBI's systems go down, money stops moving across the banking system. A second large site gives the central bank more computing capacity and a way to keep running if one location is hit by an outage, disaster or attack.
According to Business Standard, the facility is designed to help the RBI maintain business continuity and reduce exposure to natural disasters and geopolitical risks. PTI quoted an official as saying the Jatni site was chosen for its geographical stability, away from earthquake-prone zones and high-risk border areas.
The scale of the systems involved
Sitharaman said UPI now carries more than 2,400 crore transactions a month, or nearly 80 crore a day. She said annual volume has grown about 13,000 times since 2016-17. She also noted that data centres received infrastructure status in 2022, and that the Union Budget 2026-27 announced a tax holiday for foreign companies providing global cloud services from data centres in India.
What the leaders said
- PM Modi: "As India grows stronger economically, protecting our banking system becomes equally essential. Outdated systems and conventional training methods would not be sufficient to deal with emerging challenges." He added: "The past decade was about taking banking to people who had been excluded from it. The coming decade will be about making banking more efficient and more reliable." (Business Standard)
- RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra: "The new data centre will further enhance the capacity, resilience and security of our critical systems." He also said: "Any system that is not secure cannot earn public trust." (ANI)
- Sitharaman: "With this campus, the Reserve Bank adds to that capacity at home for the systems at the very heart of our payments." (ANI)
Malhotra said the RBI has frameworks in place on IT governance, cyber resilience, outsourcing, third-party risk and digital payment security. He added that the central bank is encouraging AI "guided by accountability, fairness and explainability".
What is still unclear
- Which systems will move to Jatni, and when.
- How the new site will share work with the Navi Mumbai data centre, for example whether it will act as a live backup or run some systems on its own.
- How many people the training institute will train each year.
Concentrating critical payment systems in a small number of sites improves control but also makes their physical and cyber protection essential. HorizonDesk will update this story if the RBI publishes more details.
What it means for you
Nothing changes for customers today. UPI, NEFT and RTGS work as before. The aim is to make outages and attacks on the systems behind these payments less likely. Fraud that targets individual users, such as fake payment requests and phishing, is a separate risk, and the usual precautions still apply.
Related reading on HorizonDesk
- How to protect yourself from UPI and online payment fraud
- UPI MDR charges deferred until after Diwali: what it means
- When a cloud outage took down UK banks and courts
- CBFC data breach exposes scripts from 500+ films
Sources
- Business Standard / PTI: PM inaugurates RBI's ₹169-crore data centre, cybersecurity institute in Odisha (25 Oct 2026)
- Business Standard: Future wars may target a country's economy, not just military: PM Modi (25 Oct 2026)
- Hindustan Times: PM Modi inaugurates ₹169-crore RBI data centre, cybersecurity training institute (25 Oct 2026)
- NewKerala / ANI: RBI's new data centre to strengthen India's critical payment infrastructure (25 Oct 2026)
- The Economic Times: UPI handles nearly 80 crore transactions daily, says Nirmala Sitharaman (25 Oct 2026)
