There’s so much happening in the country that we all are unintendedly a part of. With the events that unfolded on 8th Nov, a lot of things have changed. Our Prime Minister Shree Narendra Modi announced that high-value currency of 500 and 1000 would cease to be legal tender.
I, who belongs to a generation where smartphones have helped us in all areas of our life completely support the decision of a cashless economy. I still feel the decision of demonetization should’ve been a more planned one so that the collateral damage and the consequences of it could have been minimized.
Fast-forward a month after the demonetization of high-value currency notes, I was invited to an event hosted by Axis Bank at the MatchBox Cafe, Hauz Khas. While I got to know that the event had something to do with a new product, namely Axis UPI (which certainly is not a beauty product), I was intrigued by it. Launching a product in the middle of this demonetization phase, I somehow had a notion that this could be the solution for the aching India.
To understand more of it, I attended the event and got to know that UPI is short for Unified Payments Interface, which was an initiative taken by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) led by our former RBI governor, Mr. Raghuram Rajan. The Axis Pay UPI mobile application makes use of the UPI standards and provides a platform on smartphones for everyone to transact with others including merchants, friends, and family in a hassle free manner.
With the increasing use of smartphones in our country, the UPI is a revolutionary step in the making of digital India and I can see it becoming the defacto standard for payment in the near future.
With the advent of UPI, the details including the payee’s account number, bank’s IFSC code have now been made irrelevant for transactions, which is still a part of NEFT and IMPS. The maximum limit for any transaction is ₹ 1 lakh as of now.
As of writing this blog post, the application is only available on Google Play Store for Android phones and is not yet launched for iOS devices. I was impressed that most of the banks are already a part of this venture and a few of them which aren’t will be onboard soon.
Apart from this information, here are a few questions that I think will be on everyone’s mind.
How Axis-Pay UPI works?
Axis Pay UPI makes use of a unique ID which you need to register when you first log on to the application. Once the registration process is complete, you can either send or receive money through the application. The details for registering your account, sending and receiving the money are given below.
Registration
- Download the application by visiting the Play Store.
- Select your bank account
- Create your ID (your ID is similar to a username & should be unique and easy to remember)
- Verify your account
- Set your PIN
Sending Money
- Enter your ID and receiver’s ID
- Enter amount in ₹.
- Authenticate using your PIN
Receiving Money
- Enter your ID and sender’s ID
- Enter amount in ₹.
- Wait for the receiver’s approval
How UPI is different from other online transactions?
The two major transaction types that are in place are through Bank and Mobile Wallets, such as PayTM and Mobikwik. UPI is a mode of payment that combines the best of the two transaction types. It provides the security of the bank account and completing a transaction is easy and happens in real time, much like our digital wallets. The advantage I see over digital wallets are that there is no need to load your money to complete a transaction.
An in-depth comparison with other transaction types, namely IMPS, and NEFT is made available by the Axis Bank here.
Hope this helps you guys in some way.
Coming with lots more, Stay tuned!
Tada
Love,
Priyanka