The government will launch a digital lending service this year that will allow even small street vendors to take out loans from big banks, Telecoms and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday.
In a speech at Digital Payments Utsav, Vaishnaw said it will be introduced as follows UPI Service and will be a great achievement under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision Digital India.
“This year we will roll out digital credit and NPCI will be a major leader in this over the next 10-12 months. A good digital credit construct will be created,” Vaishnaw said.
At the event, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) presented a prototype voice-based payment system for UPI.
The minister said people will soon be able to make payments by phone in their local language.
He said the service will be available in 18 Indian languages.
At the event, MeitY Secretary Alkesh Kumar Sharma said UPI is now set to become a global payments product, for which the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has already partnered with Nepal, Singapore, Bhutan, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates , where the UPI model applies.
“UPI services will now be enabled for NRIs in 10 countries – Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, UAE, UK and US,” he said.
The IT secretary further said that the integration of India’s UPI with Singapore’s PayNow system is underway, which will soon enable real-time cross-border payments.
On February 8, the Reserve Bank of India announced that it has proposed allowing all travelers entering India to use UPI for their merchant payments while in the country.
UPI The payment system has become very popular for digital retail payments in India and its adoption is growing rapidly.
