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Don’t have a smartphone? You can still make UPI payments from today
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will launch a UPI-based payment product for products for such handsets today.
Crores of feature phone users will soon be able to make digital payments as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will launch a UPI-based payment product for products for such handsets today. “Watch out for the launch of UPI for feature phones - UPI123Pay and 24*7 helpline for digital payments - DigiSaathi by RBI Governor at 12 noon on March 08, 2022,” the central bank tweeted via its official handle.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has emerged as a popular mode of payment through smartphones.
In December, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das announced the launch of digital payment systems for feature phones.
What are feature phones?
Feature phones are not smartphones and serve basic functions like making calls and sending a text message
To deepen financial penetration, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said it is important to bring feature phone users into mainstream digital payments.
"These products, coupled with other complementary solutions, will facilitate UPI-based digital payment solutions on feature phones to promote wider digitisation. It is proposed to launch a UPI-based payment product for feature phone users. Further details will be announced shortly," RBI Governor had said.
India has a large mobile phone consumer base of about 118 crore users (TRAI, October 2021). Of this, a significant number of users are still on feature phones. As per Statista, in July 2021, about 74 crore users have smartphones.
However, feature phone users have limited access to innovative payment products. Although feature phones have NUUP (National Unified USSD Platform) as an option for availing basic payment services using the shortcode of *99#
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First Published:8 Mar 2022, 09:28 AM IST
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