Analysis of Usage of UPI Payments in Banking Sector

The genesis of India’s unified payment solution prior to 2016; India used a number of different systems to transfer money between banks. The traditional forms included RTGS, IMPS and NEFT. With the plethora of systems, rules and growing paper burden, there was a need for a unified system that could automate and standardise India’s payment platforms. In 2016, NPCI set out with a mandate to change the face of India’s payment systems. It developed the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as an architecture framework with a set of standard Application Programming Interface (API) specifications to facilitate online payments. The aim was to simplify and provide a single interface across all NPCI systems, thereby creating interoperability and a superior customer experience. The pilot program, with 21 member banks, was launched on 11th April, 2016, by Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan, Governor, RBI, in Mumbai. From 25th August, 2016, a growing number of banks started to upload their UPI enabled apps to the Google Play store. The Indian Banking system is considered as a strong backbone of India’s economy through which millions of financial transactions get exchanged every single minute. To increase this number in the year 2016 India has taken initiatives to start the “Digital India” campaign by National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) through which online digital payments got huge importance. In the year 2021, India became the global leader in real time digital payments. This study will be helpful to understand the changing scenario of the banking system in India and also cover the satisfaction of customers with their banking services. In India unified Payments Interface has become the game changer in the history of the banking system. It helps to smooth functioning of the payment system without any complications. This study will be useful to know the impact of UPI on banking. The objective of the study is to study awareness, preferences, level of satisfaction of customers while transferring funds. The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is one of the great inventions of E-payments introduced by National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI). UPI is an advanced and significant payment system in terms of cost, ease of use for consumers, settlement times and security. It has facilitated a large number of populations to bring within the purview of the digital economy. It is a type of payment system through which any customer holding a bank account can send and receive money through a UPI-based app. The customer can easily exchange money by using UPI payment apps.