RBI to push UPI payments through feature phones

In 2012, the National Payments Corporation of India had launched a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data)-based mobile banking service called ‘*99#’. Initially, the facility was only available to MTNL and BSNL users. It was later expanded to all telecom service providers.

In 2017-18, USSD 2.0 transactions accounted for 4.3% of total UPI volumes and 1.6% of total transaction value. Last year, its share in volume and value transactions had fallen to 0.005 and 0.004%, respectively.

Until November this year, a total of 0.85 million transactions took place via USSD 2.0, amounting to USD 1.7 billion. In contrast, 26,850.9 million transactions on the entire UPI platform were worth USD 660 billion.