Unified payments interface (UPI)

• IAS NEXT, Lucknow
• 10, Dec 2021

Reference News:

The UPI facility will soon be extended to feature phone users. At the moment, the Unified payments interface (UPI) — the single largest retail payments system in the country in terms of volume of transactions for small-value payments — is available only for smartphones.

Need for:

RBI is doing this to further deepen digital payments and make them more inclusive, ease transactions for consumers, facilitate greater participation of retail customers in various segments of financial markets and to enhance the capacity of service providers.

What is UPI?

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant real-time payment system, allowing users to transfer money on a real-time basis, across multiple bank accounts without revealing details of one’s bank account to the other party.

• UPI is currently the biggest among the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) operated systems including National Automated Clearing House (NACH), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), Aadhaar enabled Payment System (AePS), Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS), RuPay etc.
• The top UPI apps include PhonePe, Paytm, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and BHIM, the latter being the Government offering.

What is BHIM?

Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) is India’s digital payment application (app) that works through UPI, a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application.

• Developed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).
• Allows real time fund transfer.
• Launched in December, 2016.

 The BHIM app has three levels of authentication:

1. For one, the app binds with a device’s ID and mobile number.
2. Second a user needs to sync whichever bank account (UPI or non-UPI enabled) in order to the conduct transaction.
3. Third, when a user sets up the app they are asked to create a pin which is needed to log into the app. The UPI pin, which a user creates with their bank account is needed to go through with the transaction.