UPI PrePaid Voucher – Who will be the first Issuer?

UPI PrePaid Voucher – Who will be the first Issuer?

 

            NPICI UPI Team vide announced a new Digital Payment Channel in our country. This digital payment channel rides on the successful UPI Platform.

Two broad categories of UPI PrePaid Voucher are envisaged

Category 01) P2P i.e Person to Person

Category 02) B2C i.e Business to Consumer

As of now only the B2C process is released. The P2P process will follow at a later date

UPI PrePaid Voucher beneficiary need not have a bank account or be a UPI user. This is the most unique feature of the whole channel.

Immediate Use Case –

Future use cases, with focus on Covid19 vaccination are mentioned below

            8 Banks are Live as Issuers on UPI PrePaid Voucher platform. The Banks are

01)  Axis Bank

02)  Bank of Baroda

03)  Canara Bank

04)  HDFC Bank

05)  ICICI Bank

06)  Indusind Bank

07)  Punjab National Bank

08)  State Bank of India

5 entities are Live as Acquirers on UPI PrePaid Voucher platform. The Acquiring Entity / Apps are

01)  Axis Bank – Bharat Pe

02)  BOB – BHIM Baroda Merchant Pay

03)  HDFC Bank – HDFC Business App

04)  Punjab National Bank – PNB Merchant Pay

05)  SBI – SBI Yono Merchant

As of now, the UPI PrePaid Voucher can be redeemed only on the above UPI Apps. In the near future, more Apps may acquire UP transactions.

 

Visualization of process flow at the Acquiring Merchant

01)  Holder of the UPI Prepaid voucher approaches the merchant buys the services/goods and informs the merchant that he/she will pay via UPI Prepaid voucher

a)       If payment via UP QR Code – Buyer shows the UP QR Code on his/her smartphone. Merchant scans the QR Code via the UPI PrePaid Voucher acquiring App

ai) In the background, the transaction flows to NPCI, then to Issuing bank, if all well, authentication takes place and the UPI PrePaid Voucher amount moves from the UP to the merchant account

aii) This is a completely digital process, with minimal human intervention

 

b)      If payment via UPI PrePaid Voucher SMS String - Buyer shows the SMS String to the merchant. Merchant inputs the SMS String on the UPI PrePaid Voucher acquiring app.

bi) In the background, the transaction flows to NPCI, then to Issuing bank, if all well, authentication takes place and the UPI PrePaid Voucher amount moves from the UP to the merchant account

bii) This is a completely digital process, with minimal human intervention

The actual process flow will be known once UPI PrePaid Voucher redemptions start taking place

Apart from NPCI, there are 5 entities part of the UPI PrePaid Voucher process cycle

Issuer Bank (Issuer): Bank who shall initiate a request to create UP on UPI

Sponsor: A Corporate, Central / State Government Department, Business customer of the bank who 

PV (Prepaid) Voucher Beneficiary: The person to whom the UPI PrePaid Voucher is issued. A PV beneficiary may not be a UPI user or bank account  holder.

Designated Merchants: These are specific voucher acceptance points where vouchers can be redeemed / used.

Acquiring Bank: These are banks that provide facility/capability to designated merchants to accept UPI Prepaid voucher (String/QR) for redemption.

 

Future use cases based on Covid19 Vaccination

01)  Social Service organizations like Lions Club, Rotary Club, Vasavi Club etc in an attempt to encourage vaccination may offer UP say ranging from INR100/- to INR250/- to the vaccinated citizens, even though, citizens may get themselves vaccinated at Government centers.

As on date, Covid19 vaccines at Government Centres are free of cost.

The amount may vary, the amount mentioned here is just an example.

02)  Social service organizations, corporates or any other interested organization can directly sponsor Covid19 vaccines for a set of beneficiaries at private centers.

 

Future use cases:

01)  Scholarships

02)  Incentives

03)  Tax benefits vouchers

04)  Donations

05)  Subsidies

Read the complete UP NPCI circular @ https://www.npci.org.in/PDF/npci/upi/circular/2021/NPCIUPI-OC-No-112-UPI-Prepaid-Voucher.pdf

Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions only. The bottom line is Mission #LessCashNotCashLess. Nothing more – Nothing less.

 

Will Reliance Jio activate BBPS for repayment of its Emergency Data Loan?

 

Will Reliance Jio activate BBPS for repayment of its Emergency Data Loan?

Reserve Bank of India vide Notification dt.June 14^th, 2021  opened up BBPS (Bharat Bill Payments System) for  Mobile Prepaid recharges.

Under the mobile prepaid facility, users pay in advance to the Mobile company to avail its services.

A number of prepaid plans are offered by mobile companies, with plan validity ranging from 1 day to 365 days

There are a number of prepaid combos too i.e Data, Voice, Voice + Data etc

As the validity plans and combos are dynamic, users are advised to visit their mobile provider recharge points for an informed decision.

 

Benefits of Reliance Jio offering BBPS option to its ‘Emergency Data Loan’ customers

01)  Reliance Jio can request friends/family members to clear the ‘Emergency Data Loan’

02)  Reduced TAT in the collection of the EDL outstanding’s

03)  The quicker the repayment, the more possibilities of Reliance Jio users taking fresh ‘Emergency Data Loan’

04)  Increase customer stickiness via process convenience

05)  User need not search for easy ‘Emergency Data Loan’ repayment options

06)  ‘Emergency Data Loan’ can be availed by users who are not comfortable with digital payment options

07)  Low integration costs for Reliance Jio collection team.

08)  Positive feedback of Industry’s first usage case for BBPS Pre- Paid Recharge category

 

Proposed process:

Reliance Jio onboards BBPS for its prepaid recharges and ‘Emergency Data Loan’ payment

‘Emergency Data Loan’ Payment

For every ‘Emergency Data Loan’ availed, a BBPS invoice is created with BBPS Invoice Number being the unique identifier

Jio user or his/her representative visits any BBPS outlet - Physical or Digital, chooses

Mobile Prepaid                       Reliance Jio                 Inputs Reliance Jio Number followed by Reliance Jio ‘Emergency Data Loan’ Invoice Number.

The outstanding amount pops up and the user completes the payment

Alternatively, a Unique repayment BBPS QR Code is generated for each ‘Emergency Data Loan’ and repayment made by scanning on the same.

BBPS is operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which offers an interoperable platform for recurring bill payments.

Drawbacks:

Who will bear the BBPS charges? Reliance Jio or the end customer

 

 

 

New NPCI Circular to improve the strike rate of NACH Debit Mandates

            The strike rate pf NACH Debit Mandates refers to the successful registration by the account holders bank.

            Destination Banks return physical NACH Debit Mandates due to a variety of reasons. The reasons can be varied as:

o   Drawer Signature Differs

o   Drawer signature required

o   Image not clear

o   Amount of EMI more than the limit allowed for the account

o   Mandate registration not allowed for CC Account

o   Date mismatch with image_account number

And so on, and so forth

            The reference circular for NACH Debit Return Reasons is NPCI NACH Cir No 16 dt.November  28, 2019.

            Vide the above circular, major changes in the Return process were introduced by NPCI.

            For the first time, NPCI introduced the concept of Penalties on destination banks for returning mandates with specific reason.

            The return reason is:

MO49 - Drawer Signature not updated in CBS

Rationale: It is the sole responsibility of the destination bank to upload drawer’s signatures in all the accounts of the bank. The sponsor bank or corporate is not at fault. The corporates should not be penalized for destination bank errors.

 The following table shows the trend of mandate registration for the last year

 

Break-up of the rejected mandates return-wise is not available in the public domain.            

NPCI on June 18,2021 released fresh operating guidelines to improve the success rate of NACH mandate registration.

The circular focusses on three return reasons

Return Reason 01) Signature Mismatch:

Where there is a marginal signature mismatch, NPCI has advised banks to implement the following in the process flow –

i)                    Review by a higher official

ii)                  Seeking confirmation from the customer through tele-calling and authentication.

This is applicable only to physical mandates, as there is no Wet Signature in case of digital mandates.

Return Reason 02) Mandates drawn on CC (Cash Credit /Overdraft) account:

o   There is a specific return reason i.e Mandate registration not allowed for (Cash Credit) CC Account.

To avoid rejection of the Mandates issued for genuine business purposes, destination banks are advised to focus on the purpose tag of the mandate. Based on the mandate purpose tag, banks may have a clear picture as to what mandates should be rejected for this reason.

Ideally, appropriate business rules can be built in the bank’s processing system, to flag mandates matching the pre-defined purpose tags.

This is applicable to both physical mandates as well as digital mandates.

 

Return Reason 03) Return on account of insufficient balance to recover processing fees: Almost all the banks charge their customers for NACH Debit Mandate registration in their accounts.

For eg: Quote

HDFC Bank – One-time Mandate Authorisation Charges per mandate (Physical / Online)            Rs. 100/- + GST (effective 1st July 2019)

 

State Bank of India – 32. National Automated Clearing House (NACH) Mandate (including ‘E’ mandate)

One-time Mandate Authorisation Charges per mandate ₹50/- + GST

Failed Mandate ₹250/- +GST

 

Punjab National Bank – Inward NACH Mandate Verification - Rs. 100/- per mandate on acceptance

Unquote

The above are just examples, the actual mandate registration charge may vary within the same bank, based on account variant.

Few banks are returning the NACH debit mandate if the balance in the account at the time of the mandate registration is not sufficient to recover the respective bank’s registration charges.

Now, NPCI has advised banks not to Reject mandates if there is insufficient balance to recover the registration charges. The logic is that registration of NACH debit mandate is a non-financial transaction and not a financial transaction.

  This is applicable to physical as well as digital mandates.

 

Disclaimer: I am solely responsible for any errors. The bottom line is ‘Mission #LessCashNotCashLess’. Nothing more – Nothing less

 

 

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https://www.cowin.gov.in/home - I rely on this only

 

          The CoWIN website team offers multiple APIs for public use. Through this APIs, Web and App Developers are pulling the data and sharing to their users.

          There have been instances of Indian Jugaad and deploying the APIs to bypass the system, and get quick access to vaccine slots.

          To reduce such instances, CoWIN administrators have made few changes to the API data.

           

Quote

 

Co-WIN Public APIs to find appointment availability and to download vaccination certificates.

These APIs are available for use by all third-party applications.

The appointment availability data is cached and may be up to 30 minutes old.

Further, these APIs are subject to a rate limit of 100 API calls per 5 minutes per IP.

Please consider these points while using the APIs in your application.

 

Unquote

 

2nd Dose eligible beneficiaries – CoWIN calculates the minimum gap required between the 1^st dose and the 2^nd dose and displays only the available vaccination centres after the 2^nd dose eligibility date.  This reduces the stress on the beneficiary. There is no need to see the vaccination centres if one is not eligible for the 2^nd dose.

Two types of APIs are hosted by CoWIN team

01)                       CoWIN public APIs

02)                       CoWIN private APIs

Public APIs

User Authentication APIs

Authenticate a beneficiary by Mobile/OTP

Confirm mobile OTP for authentication

Metadata APIs

​Get states

Get list of districts Appointment Availability

Get vaccination sessions by PIN

Get vaccination sessions by district

Get vaccination sessions by PIN for 7 days

Get vaccination sessions by district for 7 days

 

Certificate APIs

Download vaccination certificate in PDF format by beneficiary reference id

 

Schemas

CenterResponseSchema

SessionsSchema

SessionResponseSchema

SessionCalendarEntriesSchema

SessionCalendarEntrySchema

VaccineFeeListSchema

VaccineFeeSchema

 

Private APIs: -

Production Server

 

          The APIs help any IT Developer to build apps which retrieve data as per the respective API function. This is a transparent method and the end user can be assured that the data is coming from an authentic source only.

Of course, if the IT Developer adds some more features to the final app, than the dynamics may change..

          In the coming day, based on the feedback received by the users, more and more enhancements will be visible in the CoWIN App

 

https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1716726

 

Disclaimer: These are my personal views only. The bottom line is Mission #LessCashNotCashLess. Nothing more – Nothing less

 

Indian techies have found workarounds to the government’s inefficient vaccine booking system @ https://qz.com/india/2005424/indians-can-book-vaccine-slots-on-cowin-via-telegram-and-paytm/

 

 

Twitter Tip Jar - Can you Tip via #UPI?

 

Twitter Tip Jar - Can you Tip via #UPI?

            I was searching Twitter to see if any profile has enabled Tip Jar. Unluckily could not find Tip Jar enabled profiles.

            Please let me know any Twitter profiles that have Tip Jar enabled. This will enable me to try out a micro-donation.

            Twitter’s Tip Jar is a feature for Tweet senders to receive tips from anyone seeing their tweet in English language. In the near future, Tip Jar feature will be enabled for other languages too.  

            Eligible Twitter account holders can add Tip Jar to their profile and accept tips. In the initial phase, eligible twitters are creators, journalists, experts and non-profits. The list will be expanded as days go by.

            The preferred payment services are: Bandcamp, Cash App, Patreon, PayPal and Venmo. Twitter takes no cut.

On Android, tips can also be sent within Spaces. Spaces is the new way to listen to live audio conversations on Twitter. The creator of a Space i.e Host can also receive Tips via Tip Jar, if his/her profile is eligible for the same. As ‘spaces’, are more direct than tweets, the chances of Tips after completion of a ‘space’, are high.

Cash App - Cash App is a mobile payment service developed by Square, Inc. that allows users to transfer money to one another using a mobile phone app. The service is available in the US and the UK. As Cash App is still not available in India, tips cannot be done via #UPI

 

Patreon - Patreon is an American membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. As Patreon is not yet available in India, tips cannot be done via #UPI

PayPal – As per an article dt. 21 Dec, 2021, PayPal's Xoom adds UPI payments enabling NRIs and PIOs to remit money to India in real-time article. But, will this work in Twitter Tip Jar has to be seen in action.

Venmo - Venmo is a mobile payment service owned by PayPal. Venmo account holders can transfer funds to others via a mobile phone app; both the sender and receiver have to live in the U.S.. so #UPI is out of the question

 

Additional Reading: -

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2021/introducing-tip-jar.html

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/twitter-begins-testing-tip-jar-a-new-way-to-give-and-receive-money-on-the-platform/article34504409.ece?homepage=true

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57021380

 

Disclaimer: These are my personal views only. The bottom line is Mission #LessCashNotCashLess. Nothing more-Nothing less