Joining The Row Of Paytm & PhonePe, Now Google Pay Launches UPI Lite

Google Pay has launched its UPI Lite features in India, in alignment with UPI Lite launched by the Reserve Bank of India in September last year. 

This feature allows users to make payment up to INR 200 and doesn’t require PIN to initiate the transaction. The idea is to make UPI payments convenient and lighter. 

According to a report carried out by Mint, UPI Lite is also linked to bank accounts like the original UPI version, but the Lite feature does not rely on the issuing bank’s core banking system in real-time. However, only one bank account can be connected to UPI Lite at a time. 

Mint quoted Ambarish Kenghe, Google’s VP Product Management saying, “At Google Pay, we feel privileged to partner with the Indian government along with NPCI and RBI, in growing the reach and usefulness of UPI.”

He further added, “Unique offerings and use cases are core to driving further adoption of digital payments in the country and with the introduction of UPI Lite on the platform, we aim to simplify small-value transactions by helping users access a convenient, compact and superfast payments experience.”

Further it also promises higher success rate even during the peak hours of transaction. 

According to the official blog by BHIM UPI, the UPI Lite wallet should have a minimum balance of INR 2,000 anytime.  

Google Pay’s competitors PhonePe and Paytm rolled out UPI Lite earlier this year. While PhonePe rolled it out in May, Paytm did so in February.

UPI has gained mass popularity due to convenience and universal acceptability across all banks and QRs. In fact, UPI has been launched in France too. With this, France joins the growing list of countries with Nepal, Canada, Bhutan launching UPI-enabled payments services. 

All these come after UPI recorded INR 14.89 Lakh Cr transactions in May, a 5.83% month-on-month (MoM) growth. According to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) data, on a year-on-year basis, the transaction value rose 43.03% in May, while the transaction count increased 58.5%. 

Amid all these, PhonePe continued to top the chart of UPI payments with 446.14 Cr transactions, worth INR 7.46 Lakh Cr in June 2023. 

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