Unified Payments Interface is an instant real-time payment system developed by National Payments Corporation of Indiafacilitating inter-bank transactions. The interface is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India and works by instantly transferring funds between two bank accounts on a mobile platform. As of March 2019 there are 142 banks live on UPI with a monthly volume of 799.54 million transactions and a value of. UPI witnessed 1,029.44 crore transactions until August 2019. The mobile-only payment system helped transact a total of during the 37 months of operation starting from 2016.
Service
Unified Payments Interface is a real time inter bank payment system that allows sending or requesting money. Any UPI client app may be used and multiple bank accounts may be linked to single app. Money can be sent or requested with the following methods:
Virtual Payment Address or UPI ID: Send or request money from/to bank account mapped using VPA.
Mobile number: Send or request money from/to the bank account mapped using mobile number.
Account number & IFSC: Send money to the bank account.
Aadhaar: Send money to the bank account mapped using Aadhaar number.
Any UPI app can use payment and transfer fund from and to UPI enabled banks.
UPI 2.0
On 16 August 2018, UPI 2.0 was launched which enabled users to link their Overdraft accounts to a UPI handle. Users were also able to pre-authorise transactions by issuing a mandate for specific merchant. 2.0 version included a feature to view and store the invoice for the transactions.
Supported banks
The website of National Payments Corporation of India lists the banks that facilitate UPI. Banks here are termed as Payment Service Providers - listed with their UPI application and handle - and issuers. PSP includes those banks which have their own mobile application to facilitate transaction and issuers include banks which don't have their payments interface and rely on third party software for transaction using UPI.
Acceptance
There are talks happening to operate UPI in United Arab Emirates and Singapore which has sizeable Indian expatriates and for ease of payment for Indian tourists travelling abroad. Committee on digital payments led by Nandan Nilekani had suggested that NPCI should internationalise payment services like UPI, RuPay and BHIM.
