Paytm Payments Bank launches UPI LITE for faster transactions

In a bid to boost small unified payment interface (UPI) transactions, Paytm Payments Bank, the banking arm of fintech Paytm, has launched the UPI LITE interface in its app. This means that users can make payments without entering a password. The UPI LITE feature was enabled by the National Payments Corporation of India on the app.

"Our associate Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL), has gone live with UPI LITE, a feature enabled by National Payments Corporation of India for multiple small value UPI transactions. It enables faster real-time transactions with a single click through Paytm. With UPI LITE, our Bank aims to drive the adoption of digital payments across the country," Paytm says in a statement.

With this, Paytm has become the first digital payment platform to introduce UPI LITE option in its app.

"As per official data from NPCI, half of the everyday UPI transactions in the country are less than ₹200 and with UPI LITE, users get a superior experience with faster and safer real-time small value payments. We are focussed on driving digital inclusion and the launch of UPI LITE is a big step ahead in that direction," said Surinder Chawla, MD and CEO, Paytm Payments Bank.

Once loaded, a UPI LITE wallet allows a user to do instant transactions of up to ₹200, making the entire experience quick and seamless. A maximum of ₹2,000 can be added twice in a day to UPI LITE, making the cumulative daily usage up to ₹4,000. 

"UPI LITE is a new payment solution that leverages the trusted NPCI Common Library (CL) application to process low-value transactions that have been set at below ₹ 200. The solution runs off existing UPI ecosystem protocols for mobile phones to ensure commonality, compliance, and system acceptance. UPI LITE experience is intended to be a customer-friendly approach to enabling low-value transactions without utilizing a Remitter bank’s core banking systems in real-time while providing adequate risk mitigation," according to NPCI.

The benefits of using UPI LITE include an improved success rate for UPI transactions, fewer infrastructure loans on remitter bank CBS, and an uncluttered passbook for users.  

"We are very excited to launch UPI LITE on Paytm Payments Bank. UPI LITE provides users a faster, secure, and seamless low-value transaction experience. With more than 50% of transactions through UPI below ₹200, UPI LITE will successfully provide a distributed way of authorising low value transactions, moving them away from core banking. This shall further improve the success rate of transactions, enhancing the user experience, and taking us one more step closer to processing a billion transactions a day on the UPI platform," said Praveena Rai, COO, NPCI.

The development comes months after the bank announced that users can receive and send money instantly to any mobile number with a registered UPI ID across platforms using the Paytm app in December last year.