Govt plans to launch UPI, USSD platforms with new features

Govt plans to launch UPI, USSD platforms with new features  To strengthen its push towards making India a digital economy, the government plans to launch two of its digital initiatives - The United Payment Interface (UPI) and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), in a new avatar. The newer version of the platforms would be consumer friendly and help make digital

transaction either with or without an internet connection, as reported in Economic Times . The new easier-to-use application for UPI would be launched in a week and will feature a single app that a user can download to transact across multiple banks. Meanwhile, the USSD platform too will be upgraded which will enable banking through feature phones. According to NPCI’s Managing Director AP Hota, which hosts the two platforms and handles all retail payments in the country, the number of UPI transactions has doubled to 70,000 with 4.2 million registered users. The UPI app so far has been constrained by lack of a common application. However, in the new version, more functions will be added in the hope that instead of upgrading their individual apps, the banks will switch to the common app, believes Hota. So far about 33 banks have signed-up on the UPI platform but each of them have their own application. The new app without replacing the old one will come in a trimmed version of the apps already present with all the basic features. Banks will now be able to either endorse the common app or only allow their customers to use the in-house app with new features. With regards to the USSD platform, NPCI wants to integrate it with UPI because the biggest challenge with this platform so far has been that bulk of the transactions did not involve transfer of money. However, now 5000 transactions per day on USSD involve transfer of money.