Date : 26.8.2016

UPI allows you to transfer money without knowing the bank account. Here’ how...

On Thursday, the RBI approved the Unified Payment System (UPI), a common platform which links your bank account number to a virtual payment address, effectively making money transfer as easy as an SMS.(AFP)

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Send money up to Rs 1 lakh to any bank account through your mobile without entering debit/credit card details, netbanking/wallet password or even knowing the receiver’s account number. This is not magic, it is called Unified Payment System.

Launched by retail payment platform National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) - backed by the RBI, the UPI app user need not remember the 15-digit bank account number or the 11-digit IFSC code (used to identify bank branches).

Instead of account details, the receiver can merely share a virtual address, which can be your name, or your phone number and the sender can transfer money. For example, if your name is abc, the your virtual address could be abc@axisbank or abc@icicibank; if your phone number is 1234567890, then your virtual address could be 1234567890@axisbank or 1234567890@icicibank and so on.

On Thursday, the RBI approved the Unified Payment System (UPI), a common platform which links your bank account number to a virtual payment address, effectively making money transfer as easy as an SMS.

From next week, almost 21 banks will be ready with the UPI mobile app that will allow to link and access multiple bank accounts through a single address.

Built on the IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) platform, the transaction limit for UPI is set at Rs 1 lakh per transaction and for IMPS it is Rs 2 lakh.

After the RBI’s final approval, NPCI had decided that only the banks with 1000 pilot customers, 5000 transactions and success rate of around 80% would be permitted to go live.

List of Banks going live with UPI:

• Andhra Bank, Axis Bank, Bank of Maharashtra, Bhartiya Mahila Bank, Canara Bank, Catholic Syrian Bank, DCB Bank, Federal Bank, ICICI Bank, TJSB Sahakari Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Karnataka Bank, UCO Bank, Union Bank of India, United Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, South Indian Bank, Vijaya Bank and Yes Bank.

Issuers:

• IDBI Bank and RBL Bank are on-boarded as issuers. It enables their customers to download any UPI enabled Apps mentioned above and link their account