WhatsApp, Facebook & Android Pay, likely to integrate with UPI & BHIM
Bangalore, July 11 2017: Six months after the Indian government launched a slew of  e-payment tools and linked them to  Unified Payments Interface (UPI)  which brings multiple banks to a single mobile application, Internet  and social media biggies like Google ( Android), Facebook,Uber and WhatsApp  look set to   check in. 
Google has   almost completed  testing the interfaces of its e-payments tool, AndroidPay with UPI and is awaiting a green signal from the Reserve Bank of India to complete the integration. Both WhatsApp and Facebook are in  discussion with the  nodal agency  for retail payments -- the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) -- to integrate  their respective chat messengers with UPI.  WhatsApp is  said to be planning to partner  with ICICI Bank and Axis Bank for its UPI extension. Axis Bank is also the likely partner of  American payment platform, Stripe to  offer international payments  to Indian customers, harnessing Blockchain technology.
While Indian cab integrator  Ola is already on the national payments platform,  the Indian end of global player, Uber is also known  to  be working to integrate and for starters will facilitate  customers to use their UPI handles to pay for cab rides. And while Indian  web retailer Flipkart already accepts payments through UPI  apps like BHIM,  Amazon is also  reportedly  in a testing phase.
NPCI Managing Director and CEO, A.P. Hota,  briefed media in Bangalore yesterday, about these developments,  which are set to explode the  use of this Made-in-India-for-India e-payments platform and make this  possibly a global leader in cashless  consumer money transactions.
UPI has crossed 1 crore transactions valuing Rs. 3,000 crore, Mr Hota added. RuPay  the NPCI-run debit and credit card platform  has seen monthly transaction volumes at  Points of Sale (POS) and e-commerce sites touching  4 crore with a money value of around Rs. 5,000 crore during  the first three months of this fiscal year ( April - June) 2017. NPCI’s Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS) using the BHIM tool saw monthly volumes of  5 crore, 6 crore and 7 crore  during April, May and June 2017.
“The nation has  set us a target of achieving 25 billion digital payments transactions mark in   2017-18," Mr Hota said.