RBI Governor launches three key initiatives at Global Fintech Fest 2022

By Leandra Monteiro

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Shaktikanta Das in the presence of Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Chairman Infosys and Advisor to NPCI, and Mr. Biswamohan Mahapatra, Chairman NPCI launched three important initiatives from the floor of the Global Fintech Fest 2022 held in Mumbai, Maharashtra which will take India’s digital payments journey to the next level – RuPay Credit Cards on UPI, UPI LITE and Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments.

With the linking of RuPay credit cards on UPI, customers 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 credit card acceptance using assets such as QR codes . 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 be able to use RuPay credit cards on UPI with the 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 the 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 INR 200, while the total UPI Lite balance limit for a wallet on the device will be INR 2000 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.

Furthermore, the Honorable RBI Governor also launched Bharat BillPay Cross-Border Bill Payments which will make 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 onboarding journey in the next 300 million users of digital payments.