In a major push to make UPI even more seamless, and uniform for all merchant transactions, and peer to peer money transfers, Govt. has made a major announcement related with usage of BharatQR code for all UPI apps.
Meanwhile, UIDAI wants even more usage of UPI for cashless payments and has set ambitions for 1 billion UPI based transactions by December 2018.
Will UPI expand?
BharatQR Code Must For All Bank UPI Apps!
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which is spearheading the UPI movement in India, has mandated for all UPI apps by banks to support BharatQR code via their app.
In case any bank doesn’t follow this rule, then the facility to use UPI platform for money transfer can be barred as well. April 16th is the deadline.
In a notification, NPCI said,
“PSP banks must decline such transactions from non-compliant BHIM UPI apps after April 16, 2018 proactively,”
Three major changes and mandatory rules have been announced by NPCI related to UPI payments via UPI apps of respective banks:
- All UPI apps should be able to support fund transfer using any UPI payment address
- Respond to collect request from other UPI addresses
- Generate and scan BharatQR code and UPI code across all platforms
In case merchant apps are not able to generate BharatQR code, they should be able to scan them.
Interestingly, private players such as Paytm, Amazon, PhonePe and others which are also using UPI platform have been kept out of this rule. Only official UPI apps of banks are mandated for supporting BharatQR code.
Paytm has recently become the biggest UPI platform.
UIDAI Aims 1 Billion UPI Transactions
Nandan Nilekani, former Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman has set an aim of 1 billion UPI transactions by December end.
At a press conference organised by Kotak Mahindra Bank, he expressed his confidence that UPI transactions will beat estimates, and become the biggest cashless platform in coming days.
He said,
“There’s Paytm, there’s PhonePe, there’s Google, there’s WhatsApp and so you’re seeing a dramatic shift in the way payment is being done..”
Launched in 2016, around 171.4 million UPI transactions were happening as of February 2018.
Nandan was pretty confident on the futuristic features of UPI 2.0, the vision of which was revealed earlier this year.
Do you think that UPI would be able to beat card payments and wallets in India? Do let us know by commenting right here!