UPI QR-RuPay cards linked, UPI Lite starts

Mumbai: The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on Tuesday went live with the UPI platform for credit cards. It has first enabled its home grown network RuPay’s credit cards for payment acceptance on crores of outlets accepting QR code. Other card networks Visa and Mastercard are also expected to get on board soon.

The NPCI also launched UPI Lite — a faster way of making low-value payments (up to Rs 200) without second-factor authentication that will not clutter the user’s bank passbook. A third service launched on Tuesday was cross-border payments of bills and loan EMIs by NRIs using the Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS). 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 cards 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 the credit card instead of their bank account.

Around 50% of transactions through UPI are of below Rs 200 value. With UPI Lite enabled on BHIM app, users will be able to make small-value transactions in a near-offline mode. UPI Lite will reduce the debit load on the core banking system, thereby improving the success rate of transactions further, enhancing user experience, and taking the country 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 point in time. Eight banks are live with the feature — 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 but also 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 preferred 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.