Now link UPI payments to Rupay credit cards

MUMBAI: The National Payments Corporation of India on Tuesday went live with the UPI on credit cards by enabling its homegrown payment network Rupay’s credit cards for payment acceptance on crores of outlets accepting QR code payments. Other card networks – Visa and Mastercard are also expected to get on board soon.


NPCI also launched UPI Lite – a faster way of making low-value payments without second-factor authentication, which will not clutter the user’s bank passbook. A third service launched today was cross-border payments of bills and loan EMIs by NRIs using the Bharat Bill Payment System. The three new services were launched by RBI governor Shaktikanta Das in the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Customers of Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, and Indian Bank will be the first to be able to use RuPay Credit Card on UPI with BHIM App. Rupay credit cardholders can upload their card information in NPCI’s BHIM UPI application. Once this is done, they can scan any QR code and pay using a credit card instead of their bank account.

With 50% of transactions through UPI below ₹200 UPI Lite enabled-BHIM App, users can make small-value transactions in a near-offline mode. UPI Lite will reduce the debit load on the core banking system, further improving the success rate of transactions, enhancing the user experience, and taking us one step closer to processing a billion transactions a day on the UPI platform. The upper limit of a UPI Lite payment transaction will be Rs 200 while the total limit of UPI Lite balance for an on-device wallet will be Rs 2,000 at any time. Eight banks are live with the feature, including Canara Bank, HDFC Bank, Indian Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Union Bank of India and Utkarsh Small Finance Bank.

The governor also launched the Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments, which will make bill payments easier for people residing out of India and maintaining a house in India. With more than 30 million Indians staying abroad, India is one of the top 5 biggest recipients of inward remittances. The feature is already live on Lulu Money which is used by many Indians in the Middle East and can be used to make payments back home. Federal Bank is functioning as the BBPS operating unit for this service.