Unified Payments Interface becomes operational

August 29, 2016

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has announced that Unified Payments Interface (UPI) application has become operational.
The application will allow customers to make easier real-time payments via digital means using smartphones.
Key Facts

  • The payment gateway became operational after it received the Reserve Bank of India’s clearance that allowed banks’ UPI applications to go live on Google Play Store.
  • Initially, the UPI will be available only on the Android mobile operating system. It will be going live with 21 banks in the first phase.

About Unified Payments Interface (UPI)

  • UPI is a flagship product of NPCI that will help India to move towards a cashless economy. It is a set of standard Application Programming Interface (APIs).
  • It will provide uniform mobile payment system by leveraging digital trends such as increasing smart phone adoption and deeper penetration of mobile data.
  • It will allow customers to send and receive money from their smartphones using virtual payments address without entering bank account details.
  • It facilitates ‘virtual address’ as a single payment identifier for sending and collecting money and works on single click 2 factor authentication.
  • It works as a single identifier that will eliminate the need to exchange sensitive information such as bank account numbers during a financial transaction.
  • It merges several banking features, seamless fund routing and merchant payments into one hood. Thus, it will be a single app for accessing different bank accounts.
  • It also provides an option for scheduling push and pull transactions for various purposes like sharing bills among peers.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)

  • NPCI is the umbrella organisation for all retail payments system in India. It is being promoted the Reserve Bank of India.
  • It was founded in 2008 as a not-for-profit organisation registered under section 25 of the Companies Act, 2013.
  • It has successfully played pioneering role in the development of a domestic card payment network called RuPay, reducing the dependency on international card schemes.
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