National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) has allowed banks to make Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-enabled apps available on the Google Play Store.
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Launching the app in Mangaluru on Thursday, P Jayarama Bhat, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, said users can perform the transactions on-the-go through this app, which can be downloaded from Google PlayStore.
Many experts have said that the UPI will change the face of payments in India, primarily because it will offer customers a way of transacting very easily using their bank accounts.
The United Payment Interface, or UPI, is a system that allows for instantaneous transfer of money using what NPCI, the developer, calls a virtual payment address.
UPI will completely do away with any adding of beneficiary along with account number and IFS Code, as the technology requires just a virtual handle for instant peer-to-peer payments.
Newsletter has been successfully subscribed. These banks include – ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, YES Bank, UCO Bank, Canara Bank, Federal Bank, DCB Bank, Union Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, South Indian Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Andhra Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, Vijaya Bank, Karnataka Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, Bhartiya Mahila Bank, Catholic Syrian Bank and TJSB Sahakari Bank. UPI is built on the existing Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) that allows real-time transfer of money 24×7 and is also interoperable across banks which, giving it a leg-up compared with other money transfer applications.
The brainchild of Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, UPI is expected to revolutionise the way consumers make payments.
After assessing the success of pilot run, RBI had accorded its final approval for public launch of the product.
The UPI system, which will allow customers to send money and make payments nearly as easily as they send a text message, will go live once the banks upload UPI-enabled apps on Google Play Store.
NPCI had decided that only the banks with 1000 pilot customers, 5000 transactions and success rate of around 80% percent would be permitted to go live. It says such a threshold criteria helped the banks to refine their systems and procedure. One can use the UPI app instead of paying cash-on-delivery for products bought online and can pay for miscellaneous expenses such as utility bills, over-the-counter purchases, donations, school fees etc. UPI can also be termed as an advanced version of IMPS, which lets you transfer funds 24×7. To use the service, Indians create a PayPal.me personal URL link to their PayPal account which they can share with others to request payment.
NPCI was set up in 2009 as the central infrastructure for various retail payment systems in India and was envisaged by the RBI as the payment utility for all banks in the country.
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During the last six years, the organisation has grown multi-fold from 2 million transactions a day to 25 million transactions now.
