TRUPAY – RTN asia

YES Bank, the newest entrant to India's banking sector, has turned out to be the most aggressive when it comes to taking advantage of India's new payment infrastructure called UPI or Unified Payment Interface. While most banks are looking at UPI primarily as a replacement for cash transfer solutions like NEFT and IMPS, YES Bank is taking full advantage of the possibilities offered by the simple, real-time payment platform. In addition to offering account-to-account money transfer, it is expanding UPI to the online payment and ecommerce industry by aggressively tying up with partners. Because of its simple, easy-to-use and real-time nature, UPI can serve as a replacement for card-based as well as cash payments -- something that YES Bank seems keen to take advantage of. While other banks have restricted their UPI platform to their own apps, YES Bank has aggressively looked for partners to bundle its solutions. Among them is Flipkart, with which Yes Bank has come up with a payment app known as PhonePe. Another app partner is TruPay -- a private company which has enabled UPI payments using Yes Bank's infrastructure. Both of these apps issue their users UPI ids ending with '@yesbank'. YES Bank's efforts are aimed at converting UPI from merely a money transfer solution to a payment solution and getting a pie of the lucrative online payment business. "UPI is going to be a game changer, not just for the end consumers but also for the businesses," YES Bank said. At present, payments for ecommerce transactions are either carried out via credit and debit cards, net banking or cash on delivery. While the first three involve typing out relatively complicated card numbers, passwords and one-time PINs sent via SMS, UPI payments can be completed by pressing the mobile phone five times -- four times to enter a 4-digit PIN number and then finally to click on submit. A typical card-based payment requires the entering of dozens of characters, including a sixteen digit card number, card expiry date, CVV and finally the six- or eight-digit one-time-password sent over SMS. Similarly, cash-on-delivery involves a large cost for the ecommerce players as couriers who offer these services impose special charges for collecting the payment in addition to making the delivery. "The Bank aims to replace Cash on Delivery (CoD) with digital payments for Flipkart, Myntra and Jabong," Yes Bank said. Another positive aspect of UPI is lower cost. Card payments typically involve a cost of 1.5%-2.0% to the merchant, while UPI payment costs are much much lower. This can save a huge amount of money to companies like Flipkart, who sell items worth billions of dollars every year. "UPI based transactions will be cheaper in comparison to card and wallet transactions," Yes Bank said. Security levels also tends to be higher. While many online retailers offer their customers the option of saving their credit and debit card details with them, such data -- if leaked -- could result in people losing money to overseas hackers. However, with UPI, only the virtual ID is stored at the merchant's end, and never the four-digit MPIN. Without the PIN, the ID cannot be used to make any transaction. Since the platform is completely Indian, it is also less vulnerable to overseas hacker misuse. However, given the entrenched nature of relationship between banks and global payment platforms such as Visa and MasterCard, it remains to be seen how successful National Payments Corporation India is in pushing UPI as a widespread payment platform. "We are delighted to see YES BANK taking innovative steps towards utilizing UPI platform to on-board large merchants," said AP Hota, Managing Director & CEO, NPCI. "This will help percolate usage of UPI platform by retail customers." In addition to online retailers, YES Bank has also tied up generic payment platform providers such as Ezetap and Cashless Technologies. This can help in eliminating physical point of sale (POS) machines, the bank said. Another area where the bank has made inroads is in offering its UPI services to 'social payment' apps such as MyPoolin, Paysay and Splikart. Similarly, the app Trupay will utilize the UPI solution for broking/NBFC/Power Sector payments. YES BANK will also power UPI based Education Fees Payments through a tie-up with Instafeez. Similarly, Capital Float will be utilizing YES BANK’s UPI mechanism to collect payments from their SME borrowers. YES BANK is also engaging with Merchants on various other genres including Cab Aggregation, Mutual Funds, Insurance and other B2B use cases. "Coupled with a strong innovative offering and execution focus, YES BANK aims to capture a large market as well as mind share of the digital payments ecosystem in the India," it said.

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YES Bank leaves rivals behind in UPI implementation for merchants