Mumbai : With a view to facilitate UPI-based digital payments through feature phones, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed to launch a UPI-based payment product for feature phones leveraging on innovative products from the RBI’s Regulatory Sandbox on Retail Payments, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said during his monetary policy statement.
RBI is expected to announce the details of the product very soon.
“Although feature phones have NUUP (National Unified USSD Platform) as an option for availing basic payment services using the short code of *99#, the same has not picked up. To deepen financial penetration, it is important to bring feature phone users into the mainstream digital payments. In the first cohort of RBI Regulatory Sandbox, some innovators had successfully demonstrated their solutions for feature phone payments, under the theme of ‘Retail Payments’. These products, coupled with other complimentary solutions, will facilitate UPI-based digital payment solutions on feature phones to promote wider digitization” RBI said.