Unified Payments Bank
-Sarath Sreedhar – B.Tech CSE S7
UPI or Unified Payments Interface made the tedious process of banking easy. It is an initiative put forward by NPCI to promote cashless transaction. People don’t have to wait for long in bank instead save their money and time through mobile payment. UPI became popular after the demonization of five hundred and thousand rupee note in 2016.As per data released by the National Payments Corp of India which manages the UPI railroads the total amount transferred through UPI stood at Rs 13,144 crore in December against Rs 9640 crore in November. This is the first time the platform has clocked more than Rs 10,000 crore in a month.
Currently, if you want to make a bank payment online, you have to enter their account number, account type, Bank name and IFSC code. Even if you have all these details, typing it all in, particularly on a phone, is a painful process. Most banks take upto 12 hours to add a new payee and only then you can make the transfer. The idea behind the UPI is to do away with all of this. The interface will allow account holders across banks to send and receive money from their smartphones using just their Aadhaar unique identity number, mobile phone number or virtual payments address without entering bank account details.
According to NPCI, so far only 29 banks have agreed to start this service.To initiate a transaction, you can use two types of address—global or local.This virtual address will allow you to send and receive money from multiple banks and prepaid payment issuers.So, you will no longer need to use a particular app to send and receive money. It also have a MPIN for validating each transaction. The transaction are highly encrypted to provide security. The interface helps to link payee bank account to beneficiary bank account using a pull and push request providing data abstraction.
For example, if you use a taxi service, at the end of the journey you just have to give your virtual address and the driver will request money from it. You will get a message on your mobile phone asking for authentication. Once you authenticate the transaction by entering your password, it will be complete. This process doesn’t require either the driver or you to share bank details. Since UPI runs on IMPS, the service will be available real time and 24X7.
UPI has two factor authentication Mechanism. The mobile number provides 1st level authentication and Mobile Pin provides 2nd level authentication. The UPI works on smartphones, hence no need of swiping card on external devices such as POS etc, thus reduces the security hassles. It doesn’t require any sharing of card details through websites.
UPI is a great step in right direction and its is set to become an efficient alternative to mobile wallets and make cashless payments faster, easier and smoother for millions of people in India. It has potential to make micro payments cashless which will benefit both buyers and sellers.