Unified Payment Interface (UPI)

It is a common platform through which a person can transfer money from his bank account to any other bank account in the country instantly using nothing but his/her UPI ID.

It is developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under the guidelines of the RBI.

The interface is based on the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) platform.

The UPI app merges a number of banking features, facilitating seamless and secure fund transfer and merchant payments at single platform.

It also allows Peer to Peer collection request.

Launched in 2016.

A customer can transfer money to another person through a unique virtual address, or mobile number, or Aadhaar. Therefore, customers do not need to know the payee’s IFSC code, bank account details, etc. and this will make the process simpler.

A customer can have multiple virtual addresses for multiple accounts in various banks. There is no account number mapper anywhere other than the customer’s own bank. This allows the customer to freely share the financial address with others.