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UPI Payments: Millions of people who use applications like PhonePe, GooglePay, Paytm are in for a delight. NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) has a new proposal to add. Under this, people will be able to save their UPI ID in their preferred shopping or ticket booking websites. The benefit of this is that people will not have to type in their UPI ID while making an online payment. It will be stored like how debit or credit cards are stored. With UPI ID saved, payments can be done in seconds.
How far has the work reached on the new feature
As per ET's NPCI report, the organization is working on this feature, termed as UPI Meta. This feature is still under wraps, but once it goes live it will be a huge relief to people who will no longer have to enter their UPI ID. One step in the payment process will be omitted. NPCI staff members talk with people in the industry about this project. If a good response is received, and all the preparations are done accordingly, the feature can be implemented.
UPI payment will be as effortless as paying via a card online.
As per the report, payment sections of websites like PhonePe, GooglePay, Paytm, or even Bhima App will transform into mere clicks, similar to credit card payments, due to the introduction of UPI Meta. People will not need to repetitively type in their UPI credentials on countless sites. Instead, they can store their UPI ID in numerous shopping websites, travel booking apps, and food delivery apps. The moment they request for any item, the whole payment mechanism will get activated automatically. Nevertheless, certain worries have emerged alongside this particular functionality, which have been discussed among NPCI and the payment company organizations.
Payment giants PhonePe and GooglePay suffer loss.
As the payment giants are losing cash permits, the mobile payment apps being targeted, PhonePe and GooglePay are assumed to be the ones gaining traction. The small players in the UPI app ecosystem will find it nearly impossible to grow further. Meanwhile, it is the belief of NPCI that integrating UPI ID to preferred commercial portals would allow the UPI payment mode to contend with card payments and would appreciate the ease, though many people forget that a lot of businesses incentivize card usage due to commission while having no gain from UPI payments.
Further increasing UPI payments remains a goal.
NPCI wants to further enhance the use of UPI payments as stated payments in their reports. They wish for it to become the default payment option for users. It is important to mention that UPI payment adoption growth rate has slowed down in 2023-24. It was at 36 percent growth which is a decline from 50 percent growth witnessed over the last two years. Moreover, UPI payments are also facing interruptions of late. There have been four outages of three weeks when users could not make online payments because UPI was down. There was much comment about this on social media. A number of users commented that perhaps wallets ought to be left in pockets and cash ought to go in wallets. NPCI clearly needs to take all these factors into consideration.
