National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has introduced a new version of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) 2.0 in India. The new version of UPI comes with a host of interesting features like UPI Mandate, overdraft, signed intent and QR feature, inbox and more.
Banks that will support UPI 2.0 include State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, IDBI Bank, RBL Bank, Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, Federal Bank, and HSBC. Starting with new features, the UPI 2.0 now comes with support for overdraft account. Users can now link their overdraft accounts to UPI, which gives an additional digital channel to such account holders. Apart from this, UPI 2.0 also supports saving and current accounts.
Another interesting feature is the UPI Mandate, which allows customers to pre-authorise a transaction that will be debited on a later date. There is a one-time block functionality as well. The working is pretty simple. Users can block the payment at the time of booking a cab. Once the journey is finished, it will be automatically deducted from the customer’s account.
Then comes Invoice in the inbox option, which is designed for customers to see the invoice sent by the merchant prior to making payment. This will help users to view and verify the credentials and check whether the payments details are legit or not before making a payment.
Lastly, there is Signed Intent and QR feature that allows customers to check the authenticity of a merchant by scanning QR code. It basically notifies the user whether the merchant is verified by UPI or not. NPCI reveals that the amount will be transferred only when after confirming the authenticity of the merchants.