Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das on Tuesday unveiled RuPay credit cards on UPI, UPI Lite and Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments to further boost digital payments in India.
With the linking of RuPay Credit Cards on UPI, people will benefit from the increased ability to use their credit cards and merchants will benefit from the increase in spending by being part of the credit ecosystem with the acceptance of credit cards using assets such as QR codes. said NPCI.
RuPay credit cards will be linked to a virtual payment address (VPA) i.e. UPI ID, thereby directly enabling safe and secure payment transactions.
The initial phase of operationalization will be centered on extracting actionable learning that will be used to fine-tune the proposal in later phases to scale up its use. Customers of Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India and Indian Bank will be the first to use RuPay credit card on UPI with BHIM app.
UPI Lite will provide users with a convenient solution for faster and easier low-value transactions. Currently, India thrives on low-value UPI payments, with 50% of transactions through UPI below INR 200. 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 further improving transaction success rates, improving user experience and taking us one step closer to processing one billion transactions a day on the UPI platform.
The upper limit for a UPI Lite payment transaction will be ₹200, while the total UPI Lite balance limit for a wallet on the device will be INR 2,000 at any given 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, NPCI said.
Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments is aimed at making bill payments easier for people living outside India but also maintaining a house in India. With more than 30 million Indians residing abroad, India is one of the top 5 recipients of inward remittances. The Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments facility will provide and enable Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) to make utility, water and telephone related bills on behalf of their families in India.
Federal Bank with UAE’s Lulu Exchange will be the first to go live with Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments.
“Together, RuPay Credit Card on UPI, UPI LITE and Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments initiatives have the potential to revolutionize the digital payments ecosystem and expand the reach of digital payments to many new users across India and abroad and help the journey of onboarding the next 300 million users on digital payments,” NPCI added.
