UPI can become one of the smartest innovations in transacting money across the world
India of late has emerged as one of the leading software service providers in the world where most of the backoffice work of giant multinational is done. However, there are no digital products on the shelf that come from India. The critics asks when Facebook, Google, or Twitter would come from India. The sad part is that this criticism is true as we have remained just service providers with little focus on innovation and creating products that could have worldwide appeal. But with UPI that could change. UPI is a big-ticket Indian innovation that could take the world by storm. UPI or unified payment interface has changed the way Indians transact their business and handle money. Launched in 2016, UPI though with Initial hiccups has become one of the most reliable conduits of money exchange and that too in an economy where most people are not tech-savvy and semi-literate. To be precise it is one field where India has beaten the US and Europe in their game of innovations with cutting-edge technology.
In November 2019, Google wrote to the US Federal Reserves, asking the central bank to design its upcoming instant payments system FedNow on the lines of India’s UPI. In 2021, UPI processed around 3940 billion transactions worth more than $940 billion. This is equivalent to 31% of India’s GDP. Many foreign institutions and banks have shown interest in it and are open to using it. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which rolled out UPI has entered into a partnership with European payment services facilitatory Worldline to allow Indian travelers to pay through UPI on the latter’s Point-of-Sale machines across Europe. UPI is a first-of-a-kind application that allows QR code scanning to transfer funds, a first in the world. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is an instant real-time payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The interface facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions. It is used on mobile devices to instantly transfer funds between two bank accounts and is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Digital transactions worth Rs. 8.31 lakh crore were made via the platform in January 2022 alone. In 2021–22, the value of transactions done by UPI crossed $1 trillion. So the robustness of the UPI has already been established and it works like charm. Now is the time to take it to the world and show that India is not only the best service provider, but also a great inventor.
