RBI's Big Announcement: UPI-based payment products for feature phone users to be launched soon

New Delhi: RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Wednesday proposed to launch UPI-based payment products for feature phone users. He also announced to enhance the transaction limit for payments through UPI for the Retail Direct Scheme from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.

Das, announcing the outcome of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Monetary Policy said that  UPI is the single largest retail payment system in the country in terms of volume of transactions, indicating its wide acceptance, particularly for small value payments. 

In order to further deepen digital payments and make them more inclusive, ease transactions for consumers, facilitate greater participation of retail customers in various segments of financial markets and enhance the capacity of service providers, it is proposed to 

(i) launch UPI-based payment products for feature phone users, leveraging on innovative products from the RBI’s Regulatory Sandbox on Retail Payments; 

(ii) make the process flow for small value transactions simpler through a mechanism of ‘on-device’ wallet in UPI applications; and 

(iii) enhance the transaction limit for payments through UPI for the Retail Direct Scheme for investment in G-secs and Initial Public Offering (IPO) applications from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.

Das also proposed to release a discussion paper on various charges in the payment system to have a holistic view of the issues involved and possible approaches to mitigating the concerns so as to make digital transactions more affordable.

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