 "ICICI Bank")
ICICI Bank has introduced an equated monthly instalment (EMI) facility for UPI payments made by scanning QR codes. The facility will be available for customers eligible for the bank’s ‘buy now pay later’ scheme – PayLater.
Customers can pay transaction amounts above Rs 10,000 in three, six, or nine monthly instalments. The EMI for PayLater will shortly be extended for online shopping too, the bank said in a statement. The facility can be availed across a host of categories such as electronics, groceries, fashion apparel, travel, and hotel bookings.
This comes after the Reserve Bank of India allowed UPI payments through pre-sanctioned credit lines from banks. This is expected to open up the UPI network to facilitate payments financed by credit from banks. ICICI Bank is the first lender in the country to introduce this feature for its customer. This first-of-its-kind facility will enhance the affordability of lakhs of the bank’s customers as they can now instantly buy products or services just by scanning the required merchant QR code at a store and making payments in EMIs, the lender said in a statement.
Bijith Bhaskar, Head- Digital Channels & Partnership, ICICI Bank, said “We have seen that maximum payments these days are made through UPI. In addition, we have observed that customers are increasingly opting for UPI transactions from PayLater, the Bank’s ‘buy now, pay later’ service”.
“Combining these two trends, we are introducing the facility of instant EMI for UPI payments done through PayLater. With this facility, lakhs of our customers making UPI payments by scanning a merchant QR code can shop for mid to high value items and pay in easy EMIs”, he said.
Experts had suggested that with RBI allowing payments on UPI through sanctioned credit lines, it could reignite the BNPL space, which had faced some hurdles in the past as RBI had disallowed loading of PPI instruments through credit lines. With the UPI channel opening up for access to credit lines, the point-of-purchase credit experience is expected to becomes seamless and will open up avenues to use credit across a much larger merchant base.
ICICI Bank introduced PayLater facility in 2018 to enable customers to buy small ticket items immediately in a completely digital and paperless manner. PayLater facility enables customers to shop online, pay bills, and pay to any merchant UPI ID at physical stores instantly.
UPI is the most popular and the most frequently used payments platform in the country. About 75 per cent of the digital payment transactions take place through UPI. Mostly, UPI is used as a “pay now” facility, wherein the remitter’s account is debited and the beneficiaries account is credited and about 99.9 per cent transactions on the platform are such account to account transfers. Recently, RBI also allowed linking RuPay credit cards to UPI.
