The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which is like the money manager of the country, made a decision. They decided that people can now do bigger offline payments using a digital wallet called UPI-Lite. This digital wallet is used for paying without using actual money. They increased the maximum small payments you can pay at once from Rs 200 to Rs 500. This change is to help people in places where the internet is not very strong or not available.
But, the total amount of money you can spend offline using this digital wallet is still limited to Rs 2,000.
They also said that you can only add more money to your wallet online, using something called “Additional Factor of Authentication” which makes sure it’s really you adding the money.
If you want to do a small payments offline, like face-to-face with someone, you can use this digital wallet. And in these cases, you don’t always need that “Additional Factor of Authentication.”
Last year in September, the RBI made a new thing called UPI Lite. It’s like a digital wallet that’s in a device, and it helps to make small payments quickly. This is good for banks because it makes their job easier and there are fewer problems with transactions failing. Right now, more than 10 million transactions are happening using this every month.
Earlier this month, the RBI said they want to let people make offline payments using a technology called Near Field Communication (NFC). This would make UPI Lite even better. When you use NFC, you don’t need to put in a PIN number. This change will make it easier to buy things using digital money, especially when the internet or phone connections are not strong.
