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Economy
Mahesh

10/03/22 16:18 PM IST

RBI opens up UPI for feature phones, no internet needed

In News 
  • The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) launched unified payments interface (UPI) for feature phones, bringing about 400 million users of such phones under the ambit of India’s homegrown payments network.
UPI123Pay 
  • UPI ‘123PAY’ is a three-step method to initiate and execute services for users which will work on simple phones.
  • It will allow customers to use feature phones for almost all transactions except scan and pay.
  • It doesn’t need an internet connection for transactions.
  • Customers have to link their bank account with feature phones to use this facility.
The new UPI payments system offers users four options to make payments without internet connectivity:
  • The first one is through use of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) numbers.
  • The second module is through apps on feature phones. 
  • The third method of feature phone UPI involves proximity sound-based payments.
  • This technology uses sound waves to enable networking and therefore helps carry out contactless offline and proximity data communication on any device.
  • The last method is a quintessential Indian way -- missed call approach -- where users receive a callback from a standard number to authenticate and carry out transactions.

Feature Phone 
  • Feature phones are basic phones, which typically provide voice calling and text messaging functionalities.
  • India has a mobile phone consumer base of about 118 crore, of which about 74 crore have smartphones, indicating that there is a significant number of feature phone users in the country.
  • UPI has played a major role in the adoption of digital payments in India, recording about 4.53 billion transactions worth ₹8.26 trillion in February 2022, almost double compared to a year ago. In fact, in FY21, the total value of UPI transactions was ₹41 trillion.

Source- Livemint 

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