PhonePe and Yes Bank unveil India’s “first” UPI-based payments app
Rana Kapoor, MD and CEO at Yes Bank
Payments firm PhonePe and Yes Bank have teamed up to launch India’s “first” UPI (Unified Payments Interface) based mobile payments app.
UPI was launched in April by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) – with Yes Bank being one of the 21 banks recently going live.
UPI offers instant, online bank payments, and is seen as a major change to the Indian financial sector. It enables banks to provide real-time payments through QR code enabled addresses and offers device fingerprinting for additional security.
Rana Kapoor, MD and CEO at Yes Bank, says the partnership means it can offer “banking innovations” while Flipkart (PhonePe is part of this group) can provide “leadership as India’s largest e-commerce player”.
PhonePe allows users to link their bank accounts securely to their smartphone using NPCI’s encrypted libraries. Once linked, users can authorise money transfers or merchant payments.
Yes Bank says money is “instantly” transferred directly from the sender’s bank account to the recipient’s bank account. It says there is no need to enter an OTP (one-time password) to authorise a transaction anymore. The bank says a transaction takes less than ten seconds to complete.
The bank says the 75 million registered customers of Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong (the latter two are also e-commerce firms) will soon be able to pay for all their online shopping using PhonePe.
The PhonePe Android app is now on the Google Playstore. The iOS app is expected to be live by late September.
