<p>Crores of feature phone users will soon be able to make digital payments as the Reserve Bank on Wednesday proposed to introduced UPI-based payment products for such handsets.</p>.<p>Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has emerged as popular mode of payment through smartphones.</p>.<p>India has a large mobile phone consumer base of about 118 crore users (TRAI, October 2021). Of this, a significant number of users are still on feature phones. As per Statista, July 2021, about 74 crore users have smartphones.</p>.<p>However, feature phone users have limited access to innovative payment products.</p>.<p>Although such 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.</p>.<p>To deepen financial penetration, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said it is important to bring feature phone users into the mainstream digital payments.</p>.<p>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'.</p>.<p>"These products, coupled with other complimentary solutions, will facilitate UPI-based digital payment solutions on feature phones to promote wider digitisation. It is proposed to launch a UPI-based payment product for feature phone users. Further details will be announced shortly," he said.</p>.<p>On the regulatory side, Ficci president Uday Shankar said the announcements regarding simplification and deepening of UPI will further enhance the outreach of digital payment system making it even more seamless.</p>.<p>"As part of the transition from LIBOR, we also look forward to the guidelines on the use of interbank rate or alternative reference rate (ARR) as benchmarks for ECB/Trade Credit," Shankar said.</p>.<p><strong>Watch latest videos by DH here:</strong></p>
<p>Crores of feature phone users will soon be able to make digital payments as the Reserve Bank on Wednesday proposed to introduced UPI-based payment products for such handsets.</p>.<p>Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has emerged as popular mode of payment through smartphones.</p>.<p>India has a large mobile phone consumer base of about 118 crore users (TRAI, October 2021). Of this, a significant number of users are still on feature phones. As per Statista, July 2021, about 74 crore users have smartphones.</p>.<p>However, feature phone users have limited access to innovative payment products.</p>.<p>Although such 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.</p>.<p>To deepen financial penetration, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said it is important to bring feature phone users into the mainstream digital payments.</p>.<p>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'.</p>.<p>"These products, coupled with other complimentary solutions, will facilitate UPI-based digital payment solutions on feature phones to promote wider digitisation. It is proposed to launch a UPI-based payment product for feature phone users. Further details will be announced shortly," he said.</p>.<p>On the regulatory side, Ficci president Uday Shankar said the announcements regarding simplification and deepening of UPI will further enhance the outreach of digital payment system making it even more seamless.</p>.<p>"As part of the transition from LIBOR, we also look forward to the guidelines on the use of interbank rate or alternative reference rate (ARR) as benchmarks for ECB/Trade Credit," Shankar said.</p>.<p><strong>Watch latest videos by DH here:</strong></p>