RBI brings UPI payments for 40 crore feature phone users
By MYBRANDBOOK
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced the opening up of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments for 40 crore feature phone users in India. Christened UPI123pay, the new facility will be accessible through IVR numbers, an app-based functionality, a sound-based format and even through missed calls.
RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said India’s digital economy has flourished over the past few years. UPI has played a major role in the process, recording about 453 crore transactions worth `8.26 lakh crore in February 2022, almost double compared to a year ago.
Das said, “The launch of UPI123pay makes the facilities under UPI now accessible to that section of society which was so far excluded from the digital payments landscape. In that way it is promoting a great amount of financial inclusion in our economy.”
RBI deputy governor T Rabi Sankar said since a significant portion of the five-fold increase in digital transactions has come from UPI, it is important to make the payment channel available in the offline mode and for feature phone users to move to the next phase of development. Over the last two-three years, the RBI has held competitions in its sandboxes and some of the solutions that start-ups came up with are getting introduced through UPI123pay.
Sankar said while UPI can be used in feature phones even today, the process is USSD-based, which means that a user has to dial *99# and use a menu to carry out a limited set of transactions. But the process is cumbersome, going through multiple messages which are chargeable and not all mobile providers have the USSD facility. This is one reason they are hopeful that the products introduced will fill in this gap and take UPI to the next level.
UPI123 Pay involves four different technologies.
The first uses IVR numbers, under which the user can initiate a secured call from their feature phone and after registering themselves, can start making financial transactions without internet connectivity. The second module is the app functionality in feature phones.
The third module is through proximity sound-based payments. This technology will use sound waves to enable networking and carry out contactless offline and proximity data communication on any device. The fourth module will be the typically Indian approach of using missed calls, under which users will get a callback from a standard number to authenticate and carry out transactions. Going forward, the RBI will add to these options.
RBI also launched a dedicated and purely interactive helpline for digital payments, called DigiSaathi. Under this facility, there will be toll-free numbers for users to seek redressal of their queries on digital payments, including for cards. To start with, the helpline will be available in English and Hindi and it will later be extended to cover all major regional languages.
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