RBI’s new product will bring UPI payment to low-cost feature phones

• The Reserve Bank of India today announced new measures for UPI-based payments in India.
• Feature phones will soon get a UPI payment product, and a new on-device wallet will also be launched for small value transactions.
• The new measures were announced to help ease the process of small value UPI transactions, and also make the payment system more popular through feature phones.

The Reserve Bank of India will soon launch UPI-based payment products for feature phones, and a new “on-device” wallet for small value UPI transactions, Governor Shaktikanta Das said today during the monetary policy announcement. The new measures were announced to help ease the process of small value UPI transactions, and also make the payment system more popular through feature phones which have 550 million users in India.

There are no native UPI apps or features through which feature phone users can make UPI transactions. The only way possible is through NUUP (National Unified USSD Platform) for non-internet based mobile devices. Here, users can dial *99# and make transactions through an interactive menu on their mobile phone. This however hasn’t picked up and to make UPI transactions easier and more accessible to feature phone users, UPI-based payment products will be launched soon.

“These measures will contribute significantly to deepening of digital payments in our country and will also help in the ease of doing various kinds of investments and making payments under the UPI system,” Governor Shaktikanta Das said during the announcement.

There’s also a new on-device wallet planned to help ease the flow of small value transactions through UPI. The RBI said that 50% of the transactions through UPI were below Rs 200, and these transactions use up a lot of resources which often results in transaction failures. To simplify the process of small value transactions, an on-device wallet in the UPI app will be launched. This is expected to work the same way as Paytm’s wallet where you can add money from your bank account and transact through it.

The timeline for these new UPI products haven’t been announced yet and more details will be revealed soon.

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