Unified Payment Interface - An eagerly awaited service

Imagine more than a billion users of a payment service so easy to use, so secure and so simple that even kids would like to use it to pay for their daily dose of kinder joy. This would be the mega mega mega event that finally would drive the last nail in the coffin of cash here in india.

The idea or motivation for a unified payment interface arose after significant enrollment of people in the aadhaar project. Payment banks were conceived by RBI as banks which would operate to ease payments using electronic means and would only offer deposits and no lending. Eleven licenses were handed out majority of them to telecom firms and a few industrial houses with deep pockets.

Mobile money transactions have lately crossed 10k crore mark in terms of value(monthly). IMPS even though secure and relatively free of fraud had seen limited uptake. Unified Payment Interface which is built on top of IMPS would use any of the publicly known identifiers like aadhaar number or email Id or mobile number or virtual payment Id as a token in payment transactions. No one would know whether a bank account or a payment bank account or a wallet is linked with these identifiers at the back end. This makes the process of transferring money from the mobile a lot more easier.

Not only this, you could also request someone to take money from your account by sharing your token and then authorizing the transaction by entering a password in your banking app.

Now comes the most elegant part. Smart phones with apps from either your bank/payment bank/wallet would have a dashboard where you could enter anybody's identifier and amount to be transferred. The money transfer would happen immediately. What is more you could set a limit to the amount that can be transacted daily, monthly and per transaction also. Needless to mention this app will be very very popular as

a) It would be usable throughout the country for every conceivable payment, be it to purchase vegetables or bus ticket while traveling or any other small ticket transaction.

b) This interface would be really simple and easy to use.

c) This interface will be the one provided by the government and hence meant for the masses.

Finally by end of 2016 we would witness a moment so great that it would be mentioned as the dawn of an era in cashless payments in India.