The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor’s announcement last week that the central bank is seeking to make the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) more inclusive and affordable, has been welcomed by stakeholders. The RBI will release a discussion paper on digital payment charges (including cards, wallets, and fintech, as well as the UPI), and it also proposes to extend the system to feature-phones.
It will be technically tricky and ambitious to design and implement a safe, seamless way to access and operate the UPI from feature phones. But this would, at one stroke, double penetration. As it stands, only about half