NPCI to bring in system for cash withdrawals via UPI

NPCI-owned digital payments railroad UPI undoubtedly has become the most acceptable payment mode for money transfer. Its growth pace can be estimated easily from the jump in the monthly transaction from 482.36 million in October 2018 to 1.14 billion in October 2019.

The surge in acceptance of the digital payment mode remained unstoppable as UPI clocked 1.22 billion transactions worth Rs 1,89,224 crore in November.

In a bid to make it more appealing, various banks are mulling over introducing UPI-enabled cash withdrawal for their customers. Moving a step forward, Bank of India has announced its plan of introducing such facility for its customers in partnership with AGS Transact Technologies, which offers online payment services for Merchants, fintechs and banks.

Bank of India has introduced this feature for its customers and will make it available across all other ATMs in the next three to six months after receiving proper security and technical clearance from its ATM manufacturers cited an ET report.

To bring this into operation effectively, NPCI has set a committee which will check and review the interoperability guidelines to open the feature for other bank customers as well.

With UPI-based cash withdrawal into practice, users would be able to withdraw cash with just a single scan. The customers would have to follow a few simple steps, which includes scanning a QR code with any of the UPI apps.

The main motive behind this feature is to bring a drop in the banking frauds related to ATM card transactions. In the recent past, there has been a significant rise in the number of such scams.

As per the data available, State Bank of India had blocked close to 6 lakh debit cards following a malware-related security breach in a non-SBI ATM network. Several other banks, such as Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank, too have admitted being hit by similar cyber attacks.

Amidst all of this, UPI-enabled cash withdrawal process can prove to be face-saving by preventing skimming and card cloning practices.

To facilitate banking without the internet, especially for feature phone users, RBI allows USSD-based mobile banking option. The Interface is built by National Unified USSD Platform (NUUP). The method can be used for sending money as much as Rs 5,000 per transaction. 

Besides, NPCI is also planning to collaborate with the income tax (IT) department of India to enable tax payments using UPI, as per the latest media reports.