The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday launched a new digital payment mode – Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for feature phones, called UPI123Pay. As of now the UPI system is limited to smartphones with internet connection. Thousands of feature phone users have not been able to do UPI transactions from their phones. To cover all such users and bring them into the mainstream of digital payments, the central bank of India introduced this new mode of payment.
Vishwamohan Mohapatra, President, NPCI said, “UPI123pay will digitally empower millions of people across the country and help NPCI achieve its dream of over one billion daily UPI transactions.”
How UPI will work for Feature Phones
UPI 123Pay will allow users to transact through UPI through feature phones. Except for the Scan and Pay UPI option available to smartphone users, feature phone users will be able to use all other features. UPI for feature phones does not require internet connection for transactions. To use the UPI 123Pay facility, customers need to link their bank accounts with the feature phone. Feature phone users can access various payments through the new UPI feature – person-to-person merchant payments. Initially, it is in Hindi and English.
UPI has emerged as one of the most used payment systems in India in recent years. In terms of transaction volume, UPI is the largest retail payment system in the country. “While we are growing impressively in digital payments, a large part of digitization is confined to people with smartphones. There are around 400 million feature phone users who had limited access to digital payments,” said RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Shankar. The aim is to bring a large number of feature phone users under the ambit of the UPI payment method, he noted.
“The move is to further popularize the use of digital payments, with a proposal to introduce a framework for retail offline payments across the country. The background to this announcement comes from a series of successful pilot tests. The learnings from these trials strongly suggest that there is more room for solutions related to digital payments, especially in remote parts of the country. Nitin Mathur, CEO, Tawaga Advisory Services, said, “With this development, the RBI is optimistic to capitalize on more innovative fintech opportunities along with ease of doing business in India.”
read all breaking news, today’s fresh news And Assembly Election Live Updates Here.