What is UPI and why you should consider it for your next money transfer?

Let’s consider a scenario: You want to transfer 10K to your friend and he stays in Bangalore while you are in Delhi. Till now, you would end up having two options – Either transfer through Paytm/Wallet or take his account details, enter all the details, wait for the next 1-2 hours and transfer the funds.

Consider the UPI way: You take his UPI id or just his mobile no (In case of What’s app payment) and transfer the money which directly goes to his account.

So, in the simplest terms – Unified Interface Payment is a way to transfer money instantly to the account of the beneficiary without any intermediately i.e. Payment Gateways, Paytm etc with this new payment method, your smartphones will soon double up as a virtual debit cards and you’ll be able to get rid of all wallet all together.

It was launched in 2016 and currently most of the banks do have a UPI APP or there are third party apps as well i.e. Phone Pe by Flipkart, what’s app, PayTm etc.

In this article, I will answer few of the basic questions and the benefits for our users:

What is UPI?

Unified Payment Interface can be thought of like an email ID for your money. It will be unique for each user and it uses IMPS (Immediate payment service) which is faster than NEFT and works 24*7. This means the payments through UPI will be much easier and would not require any digital wallet or debit card.

UPI is an initiative of National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI) and it is setup with the support of Reserve Bank of India and 29 nationalized banks of India.

How Does UPI work?

UPI is just like an email ID of money therefore when you want to send an email to someone you just need their email address rather than their server, country location etc. as all that information is stored in their email address.

Similarly, for a UPI transfer, you just need to know the UPI address of the other person i.e. ‘852-----@--’ and you can transfer the money without knowing about their bank details.

For example, next time you take a taxi ride and if the taxi driver has an UPI enabled than just through that you can transfer payment directly into his account and he will get an intimation like a normal transfer.

The UPI can also be used for shopping online - instead of entering your debit card number, expiry date, and CVV code, followed by waiting for the OTP, you'd just enter your UPI ID, and get an alert on your phone to verify the transaction.

How can you create an account on UPI?

Currently, most of the nationalized banks offer an UPI app to receive and transfer funds and they

will also help you get an UPI id while setting up an account itself.

However, we suggest using the 3rd party interface which is quite smooth and is also offering a lot of cash back at this point of time.

I personally use PhonePe by Flipkart. Here’s the Link to download the same - https://phon.pe/ru_prasqplrt

Final thoughts:

UPI is a great step in the right direction and its 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 micropayments cashless which will benefit both buyers and sellers.

Moreover, if you sign up currently then you will get an early advantage and you can avail the multiple benefits going on to get the maximum customers