RBI’s Latest UPI Service Doesn’t Require a Smartphone or Internet

The Prime Minister’s motive of Digital India has made the country a Digi platform where most of the people are now part of it. His initiative of people using online transaction mode has become the most successful one and keeping that in mind Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has launched Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for feature phones. 

Yes, now people with no smartphone will also be able to do online transactions. The first announcement was done in December 2021 and following his announcement the RBI Governor is going to deliver his promise by simplifying the payment method in India.

Currently, the UPI payment mode is only restricted to smartphones and people using the basic phone are not able to use it and they have to do most of the transactions in cash. In this regard, the RBI deputy governor said, 

“While we have been growing impressively in digital payments, a large part of digitization is limited to people with smartphones. There are about 40 crore feature phone users who have limited access to digital payments.”

Over the recent years, UPI has become the most prominent mode of payment in India, and the launch of a new service will take it to heights. People who have less advanced smartphones or internet connections can now do online transactions by using UPI ‘123PAY’ in a three-step payment method. In one of the interviews with PTI, RBI governor Shashikant Das said, 

“Till now, multifaceted features of UPI are mostly available only on smartphones, which excludes people from the lower rung of the society from an economic perspective, especially in rural areas, from accessing the popular service.” He also added, “The UPI volumes have touched to ₹76 lakh crore in FY22 so far, as against ₹41 lakh crore in FY21. The day is not far when the overall volumes will touch ₹100 lakh crore.”

In order to access payments from your basic phones, you can use four alternative methods, including:

1. IVR, (interactive voice response) in this you can use the system for making calls and doing the transactions
2. Another one will be payments through UPI but without the feature of scan and pay
3. Missed call approach, in which the person can give a missed call to initiate the transaction
4. The last one is the sound based payments

This online mode of payment was always the best way to pay but after the Covid wave, it came out to be a reliable method as it is quite safe. No human touch is required for online transitions and you can just do it with your smartphones. UPI service was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in collaboration with the Indian Banks Association (IBA) and Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The main motive behind this collaboration was to bring all the banking services under one platform and make it easier for people in order use all the features in a single application.