NPCI to introduce new digital payments product for feature phones

National Payments Corporation of India has recently stated that it is working on a digital payments product for feature phone users and those who are not too comfortable using mobile apps.

According to Praveena Rai, Chief Operating Officer, NPCI, the product is at the proof of concept stage right now. This new product will help further the NPCI’s goal of taking digital payments to every Indian.

“We need to move into the market which is feature phone-based… Moving towards voice-enabled payments will be the trend of digital payments that we should see and India will be a clear innovator there,”, Rai added..

While an SMS-based payment solution called Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) was launched by NPCI in 2016, its use later got discontinued with the launch of the Bharat Interface for Payments (BHIM) app in late 2017.