India is bringing peer-to-peer payments to the country through 21 banks, including Axis Bank, Icici and Yes Bank.
The Unified Payments Interface is one element of a larger digital payments overhaul strategy to improve the number of people included in India’s financial system.
The platform generates a virtual address from which people can send and receive money in person or online with a two-factor authentication option, the National Payments Corporation of India, which runs the program, said in an Aug. 25 news release. It also lets users schedule payments and payment requests and they can create multiple addresses for accounts at different banks while still identifying themselves to peers with their phone number.
About 1,000 bank employee customers have been testing the P2P payments platform since April, running 5,000 transactions with an 80% success rate. Those organizations can now put Unified Payments Interface-enabled mobile apps on the Google Play Store.
Financial inclusion initiatives are underway on different fronts in India, with the government playing a central role by encouraging and directly backing
