It seems that National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is planning to upgrade its Unified Payments Interface, a mechanism for instant inter-bank fund transfer. NPCI could launch the UPI 2.0 on July 13.
According to a report by The Economic Times, the UPI 2.0 will come loaded with a host of interesting features. The prominent one is the hike in the daily transaction limit from 1 lakh to 2 lakh. Interestingly, another prominent feature could have been ‘standing instruction’, which Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has not approved. “While the necessary approvals from the RBI have arrived, the standing instruction feature has not been approved,” said a senior banker told the publication.
This feature would have allowed customers to ask banks to debit their accounts regularly for repeat transactions, similar to what we have seen in the auto-debit facility. This would have come handy in paying loans or mutual funds investments.
However, users will still get new features with the UPI 2.0. The main feature here is block payments. Through this feature, customers will be able to block a certain amount in their bank account, which will be debited for certain completion of service.
So, for example, this will allow users to block payment till the time one gets a product from the e-commerce site. This will help to push digital cash-on-delivery option and it will surely help the customers to gain more confidence with online payments. Another important feature will be an overdraft facility that will allow users to get invoices attached with payment requests. This will allow users to check the bills before making a transaction.