Soon you will be able to make digital payments even without internet, that too from feature phones. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is testing a solution that will enable Unified Payments Interface (UPI) based digital payments to people without an active internet connection. Many people related to this incident have given this information.
The name of the payment solution will be UPI Lite
Three government officials and a senior executive of a bank who tested the solution said on condition of anonymity that the name of the solution would be UPI Lite. This solution can be used to facilitate digital payments of less than Rs 200 in rural areas first. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on January 5 has allowed offline digital payments of Rs 200 without internet.
2 Major Solutions Tested
UPI Lite feature phone will allow users to make digital payments from their bank accounts. The bank official said that two major solutions have been tested. One is the SIM overlay and the other is the software provisioned solution. SIM Overlay is a technology that allows the phone’s SIM card to perform payments and other services without data. If the transaction is done through the SIM overlay, then it uses the telecom network.
Users will have to set a PIN in their phone
The government official said that users will have to set a 4 digit or 6 digit PIN according to the protocol of their bank. Payments made on the SIM overlay method will be routed to the servers managed by NPCI under the UPI system and from there the transactions will take place on the regular UPI network. He told that this entire process will be done on SMS network instead of internet.
