{"id":237,"date":"2016-03-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.razorpay.in\/?p=237"},"modified":"2023-09-27T21:55:49","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T16:25:49","slug":"what-is-upi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/razorpay.com\/blog\/what-is-upi\/","title":{"rendered":"What is UPI after all?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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India has come a long way in online payments in a very short period of time. With the launch of NEFT and IMPS, cash transfers between accounts has been made electronic, paperless and instant.<\/p>\n

NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India<\/a>) has recently launched UPI (Unified Payments Interface) as a new way to transfer money in India. This blog post’s content is based on a recent webinar. Watch the UPI webinar by razorpay<\/a> for more detail information.<\/p>\n

UPI holds the potential to change the face of online payments in India, but there is still a lot of confusion around what UPI is supposed to be. Hopefully, by the end of this blog post, you will have a better and clear idea of what the buzz around UPI is all about.<\/p>\n

What UPI is<\/h3>\n
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  1. UPI is a way to transfer money<\/em>The easiest way to think of UPI is that it is a payment method<\/em> to transfer money between 2 parties. It is similar to NEFT or RTGS transfers in that way. Even though it is being promoted as a \u201cPayment Interface\u201d and an API, it is easier to think of it as a way to transfer money.<\/li>\n
  2. UPI is interoperable between banks<\/em>This is really important. By standardizing UPI as the \u201cmoney-transfer-API\u201d, NPCI is forcing banks to improve their interoperability. This will let customers manage their bank accounts on multiple banks over a single banking application (from any of the banks). Huge deal going ahead.<\/li>\n
  3. UPI is running on top of the existing IMPS Infrastructure*<\/em>The asterisk is because IMPS is being used “as of now”. This might change in the future as the scope of UPI is increased.<\/li>\n
  4. UPI is betting heavily on smartphones in India<\/em>Smartphone penetration in India is on the rise. UPI is heavily betting on smartphones, which means it will require mobile banking applications as a basic minimum. We also have NUUP\/*99#<\/a>, the national based-payments infrastructure run by NPCI and it is somewhat interoperable with UPI. However, to leverage the entire suite of UPI, we\u2019ll need to get smartphones in everyone\u2019s hands.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What UPI is not<\/h3>\n