UPI lite announced for offline transactions

The National Payment Corporation of India’s (NPCI) Unified Payment Interface (UPI) has become one of the most widely accepted digital payment mode because of its ease and convenience. UPI apps such as GooglePay, Phonepe, Paytm, are now ruling the online payment industry. However, NPCI now wants to make small value transactions through UPI offline. This is called ‘UPI lite – On-Device wallet’.

It should be noted that NPCI has not revealed any specific date for the launch of UPI Lite. “UPI Lite will be initially launched as a pilot with multiple banks and app providers, and after a due comfort is achieved, the full scale commercial launch with compliance timelines for on-boarding for the issuers and app providers will be declared,” NPCI added.

According to NPCI, India processes one billion UPI transaction every day, and to facilitate these growing transactions, banks have to upgrade their infrastructure and this requires better technical grip and huge investments. The NPCI took charge of this problem and has designed the ‘UPI lite functionality for UPI users. This means you can now send payments exactly how you used to do but the only difference payments under this will work offline.