NEW DELHI: Banking major HSBC has rolled out ‘Unified Payments Interface’ (UPI) solution for corporates in India. This UPI offering will provide improved collection solution to corporates, enabling them to drive sales through increased digitisation of flows, said Divyesh Dalal, Country Head of Global Liquidity and Cash Management, HSBC. “We already have four corporates on-board. We should be going live with 100 corporates in near future,” Dalal told BusinessLine. Besides HSBC, the only other foreign bank that has gone live with an UPI offering is Standard Chartered Bank. Dalal noted that HSBC’s UPI offering is not a payment solution from an expense management or convenience perspective, but one that would drive the sales for corporates.
The biggest impact will be on businesses as they would be able to sell more, he noted. Corporates adopting HSBC’s UPI offering can expect to reduce the incidence of paper and extent of cash and provide their customers with an ability to affect payments through a mobile phone anywhere. Collection cycles are expected to be faster. Cash collection often poses challenges such as pilferage, logistical inconvenience and delayed realisation for corporates. A digital solution such as UPI is expected to reduce the operational risk for businesses.
Stuart P Milne, Group General Manager & CEO, HSBC Indiac said that a UPI enabled platform will help the migration of cash towards electronic platform and support the larger vision on digital payments while overcoming the challenges of cash-fuelled economy. “This UPI initiative is a core part of our larger digital focus and builds upon our earlier investments this year in India”, Milne said.
It is basically an interface through which account holder of one bank can transfer/receive money to someone having account in same/different bank through a smartphone. There is no need for sharing each other’s bank account details. There is also no need for swiping debit/credit card, keying in your confidential PIN. The other advantage of UPI is that one can send as well as request for payments.
