UPI goes live in over 50 banks pan-India

The recent banks to go live as issuers on the platform are: Thane Bharat Sahakari Bank, Apna Sahakari Bank, Janata Sahakari Bank, The Mehsana Urban Co. Op. Bank and Vasai Vikas Sahakari Bank. Two more banks namely The Saraswat Bank and Equitas Small Finance Bank are also in the offing to join the platform. 

The NPCI was set up in 2009 as the central infrastructure hub for various retail payment systems in India and was envisaged by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as a payment utility. 

Dilip Asbe, Chief Operating Officer, NPCI said, “The UPI ecosystem now covers all Public Sector Banks and major private banks. We are in the process of extending the service for co-operative bank customers. UPI’s growing merchant base is also helping its users to make digital transactions seamlessly.” 

Top UPI-enabled merchants include the likes of Paytm, Myntra, Flipkart and LIC. BillDesk, Razorpay, CCAvenue, PayUmoney and Citrus Pay are the top five aggregators on UPI. As on end of April 2017, volume of transactions stood at over 7 million compared  with about 6.2 million a month ago. 

NPCI also launched a common UPI App called Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM) in December 2016. The new version of the BHIM will offer features like new regional languages, split-bills facility etc. It will  also integrate Bharat QR code based payments.