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By Kumar Shankar Roy: Users in India could expect to send and receive money electronically without requiring bank account information. All they would need is a single identifier, such as their Aadhaar number or short payment address or mobile number. The system is expected to take shape in 9-12 months.
At present, some banks allow users to send and get money electronically without requiring bank account information, but that is not universal. NPCI, the umbrella organisation for retail payments in India, has assigned RS Software the work to build digital payments enablement platform. Digital payments is set to become bigger with Unified Payment Interface (UPI) that will sit on top of the existing infrastructure of banks, will enable money to be transferred from one bank to another using mobile phones, said Raj Jain, chairman & managing director, RS Software (India).
NPCI has undertaken to implement the UPI that will be used by banks to innovate and launch mobile payment products in India. This is in line with RBI’s Payment System Vision (2012-15) of a cashless society using latest technology.
Unified Payment Interface will offer a simple and secured platform for digital transaction through its Application Program Interface (APIs) and harness the power of the existing payment infrastructure like Aadhar. "Besides this, UPI can also help in launching services like collect pay and direct pay where payments are made to mobile numbers instead of keying in bank accounts. The mobile in our hands will be the most powerful device. Cash handling is a major expense for everybody and that will reduce immensely once such transactions start happening," said Jain, whose company has worked on 'tokenisation' technology for Apple Pay.
This unified layer should allow application providers to take advantage of enhancements in mobile devices, provide integrated payments on new consumer devices provide innovative user interface features, take advantage of newer authentication services, among others. "This allows banks and other payment players to focus on core business and allow phones to be the primary payment device," he said. A 50-member team from R S Software is working on the project and related areas.
UPI has the ability to use personal mobile to 'pay' someone as well as 'collect' from someone. In addition, ability to pay and collect using "virtual payment addresses" that are aliases to accounts that may be payee/amount/time limited providing further security features, Jain added. kumarshankar@mydigitalfc.com Source: mydigitalfc.com
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