Unified Payments Interface (UPI) - How to use the UPI apps

In the world, now India is moving towards cashless economy. Digital and Internet banking is booming now with digital e-wallets such as Paytm, Mobikwik, Payzapp, etc.. and lot of banking apps for the mobile phones.
The transaction via net banking will charged if customer transfer money via NEFT/RTGS/IMPS, charges depend on the amount size.

With the lunch of UPI ( Unified Payments Interface), now India has moved step closer to cashless economy. Smartphone owning users can install various UPI apps to transfer money or pay money to merchants, friends and family.

So, now come to serious question, what is UPI?
UPI is a payment system that allows you to transfer money between any two parties. It is kind NFET/IMPS/RTGS, except it's far more well defined and standardized across banks. it works 24x7, no time restrictions like NEFT.

UPI allows you to pay directly from your bank account to different merchants without the hassle of typing your card details, or netbanking / wallet password. It uses MPIN as part of 2FA manadated by RBI, instead of OTP.

UPI brings the awesome idea of "Virtual Payment Address" (Which look something like 'mypay@hdfc').

Unified Payment Interface is an initiative by National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI), set up with the support of the Reserve Bank of India and Indian Banks Association (IBA). The NCPI operates the Rupay payments infrastructure that – like Visa and MasterCard – allows different banks to interconnect and transfer funds. IMPS (Immediate Payments Service) is also an initiative of NCPI. UPI is the advanced version of IMPS.

UPI is now publicly available. Check if your bank has released an updated mobile app with UPI support already.

 How Does UPI Work?
Currently, if you want to make a bank payment online, you have to enter their account number, account type, Bank name and IFSC code. Even if you have all these details, typing it all in, particularly on a phone, is a painful process. Most banks take upto 12 hours to add a new payee and only then you can make the transfer.

The idea behind the UPI is to do away with all of this. The interface will allow account holders across banks to send and receive money from their smartphones using just their Aadhaar unique identity number, mobile phone number or virtual payments address without entering bank account details.

According to NPCI, so far only 29 banks have agreed to start this service. If your bank is UPI-enabled, you can ask it to connect you to the system. To initiate a transaction, you can use two types of address—global or local. Global address includes your mobile, Aadhaar and bank account numbers. A local address can be a virtual address. Let’s say your bank gives you a virtual ID similar to your email ID (for instance, name@companyname). This virtual address will allow you to send and receive money from multiple banks and prepaid payment issuers.

So, you will no longer need to use a particular app to send and receive money. For example, if you use a taxi service, at the end of the journey you just have to give your virtual address and the driver will request money from it. You will get a message on your mobile phone asking for authentication. Once you authenticate the transaction by entering your password, it will be complete. This process doesn’t require either the driver or you to share bank details. Since UPI runs on IMPS, the service will be available real time and 24X7.