UPI to go live on July 31: Pay for everything with your mobile

It cannot get faster, easier and convenient than this. RBI’s pet project Unified Payment Interface (UPI) will go live on July 31, giving a big boost to the institution’s efforts to make India cash-less economy.

With UPI, all that a user needs is a smartphone and the UPI app downloaded for instant payment of cash. It does all the functions of a debit card or internet banking in a more secured environment. Created by the National Payment Network Company (NPCI), set up with the support of the Reserve Bank of India and Indian Banks Association (IBA), UPI is a unique payment solution as the recipient is now empowered to initiate the payment request from a smartphone without using credit or debit card and internet banking.

“This is a revolutionary product and it will be a game changer,” said AP Hota, managing director, and CEO of National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI). “By July 31, 15 banks including private and public banks, will be part of UPI. Another 15 banks, including State Bank of India and HDFC Bank, will become part of UPI by the end of September,” he said.

NPCI expects all the banks to become part of UPI by March 2017 and make it a revolutionary digital payment system. After UPI, NPCI is planning to launch Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS) in August, electronic toll collection (ETC) in September, National Common Mobility Card in October and RuPay credit card in November.

Although a large number of banks are offering mobile banking services, these are not completely interoperable, especially for merchant transactions.

This, in turn, has impacted the use of mobile payments for merchant or P2B (person-to-business) transactions. Full operationalisation of UPI, which aims at this customer convenience, will provide the standard interface for communication across different mobile-banking applications of banks thus facilitating inter-operability in P2B payments.