Indus OS, the widely regarded Android-based Indian operating system, and Yes Bank, India’s fourth largest private sector bank announced a partnership to launch the first-of-its-kind integrated UPI payment platform. Through this partnership, for the first-time ever Indian consumers can access an OS-integrated framework designed for the UPI payment platform, without the hassle of downloading and storing an external app.
Indian consumers can conveniently use the UPI payment platform directly on the SMS/ Messaging and Dialler interface, and even on third-party apps. The payment platform is expected to launch within this quarter.
On the partnership, Rakesh Deshmukh, co-Founder and CEO of Indus OS said, “This year, one of our focus areas is to empower the ecosystem with OS-integrated innovations that allow for mass applicability of initiatives launched under the ‘Digital India’ program. Our partnership with YES BANK, who have already created a success with its existing UPI framework, aims to drive up the existing growth rate of UPI-based transactions further. The OS-integrated UPI payment platform built by us allows for more deep and contextual integration with the smartphone experience. With Indus OS’ technological know-how and YES BANK’s expertise in banking, the output will surely be a success and set high benchmarks in the digital banking space. This will be a major step towards our mission to facilitate Govt. to citizen services for a billion Indians.”
Rakesh further added, “Last month, highest UPI transactions were recorded since its launch. Our aim is to help our current and future user base, who hail from across different parts of the country, and from varied socio-economic backgrounds, conveniently access the UPI payment platform. We hope this will help grow the transaction volumes further.”
Yes Bank has taken the lead in evangelising the digital payments infrastructure in India and was the first bank to partner with merchants on UPI actively. Yes Bank is currently responsible for close to 35% all UPI transactions in the country, and over 80% of the merchant transactions done on the UPI ecosystem.
Currently, over 10,000 online and offline merchants are being powered by Yes Bank’s UPI payments solutions; and there have been over 20 million downloads of such merchant-partnered apps and over five million Yes Bank powered Virtual Payment Addresses (VPAs).
Some examples of its uses:
OS-integrated UPI payment platform will enable a deeper and a more contextual user experience. For example:
1. The Indus Keyboard will have a ? symbol through which users can initiate UPI transactions within the messaging/chatting app. They can directly transfer money to the person they are chatting with by simply clicking the ? symbol. the user they are messaging/chatting with. This will work on SMS and on third party messaging apps such as WhatsApp.
2. The OS level AI will also be able to sense the user's intent to make a payment, and it will contextually suggest payments through UPI directly in the messaging applications.
3. Indus Contacts App - The contacts app on any smartphone running Indus OS will allow users to send money directly to anyone in their contact list
This development also comes soon after Indus OS announced its partnership to launch the first ever Aadhaar-authenticated OS. Indus OS is working towards linking both; the OS-integrated UPI payment platform and Aadhaar-authenticated OS to ensure a highly secure framework. This unique innovation will further enable a trusted and simplified range of transactions for the consumers.
