In an announcement yesterday, RBI said that how now every person in India can transfer money to a simple phone which is also called a feature phone. ISS New Payment System has been introduced by RBI in the name of 123pay.
Let’s see, what is this 123pay and how common man can do without a smartphone, now money transfer in minutes.
According to statistics, more than 400 million people in India are still using normal phone feature phones, and are still deprived of the facility of UPI and instant payments.
Since the pandemic, we have seen more and more people use UPI, but still, a major section stayed away from these facilities as they did not have smartphones.
That’s why RBI has launched 123Pay to fill this gap. Basically, there is UPI for feature phones and the good thing is, the internet is not even required to use it.
UPI for 3 Easy Steps to Make Payments through Feature Phones:
- Call
- Choose
- Pay
First of all, users will have to link their bank account with their feature phone and also set up their UPI PIN with the help of their debit card. The FIR account holder has to call the IVR number 08045163666 from the feature phone and choose the option of ‘Money Transfer’.
Once done, the account holder’s contact list will open on the screen. From the ISS list, they can select the name of whom the account holder has money as well. By entering the FIR amount and entering your UPI PIN, they can transfer the payment within minutes. Apart from money transfers, users can also pay their LPG gas, utility bill, phone recharge, FASTag recharge, and EMI.
Also in stores and on apps, feature phones allow users to make digital payments either by missed call or by a voice-based payment system. With this expansion, more than 40 crore people can not only transfer payments but also pay and pay bills. RBI has launched this product so that India is now banned from Digital India and for the sake of fulfilling the vision of a cashless economy as well.
No wonder, there is still a dearth of smartphones in rural India, and having a smartphone anyway does come with a lot of connectivity and network challenges. After the arrival of this system, the common man of the country can continue his digital transactions without the internet. Then he will neither need to stand in the bank line nor take the help of others for EMI or recharge.
But, the banks will get their infra reforms to make the ongoing project a success. After all, banks will have to connect both the feature phone and the bank account. First services are in ‘English and Hindi’ and in the future, these will be in regional languages also. Interestingly, RBI has also started a 24×7 digital helpline by the name of ‘DigitalSaathi’ so that users can ask their queries.
Now you must be thinking can we also buy stock from 123pay? Well, why not finally you can add funds to your Demat account with 123Pay – whether you have an internet connection or not.
The Reserve Bank of India has tried to fill the gap in the Indian digital economy by launching the facility of issuance so that more than 400 million people of India can easily do digital transactions and that too offline, is not the real digital Empowerment? And in the future, if a digital scheme comes for all sections of the society like this, then India can also run a very successful cashless economy.