Airtel Payments Bank Enables BHIM UPI Based Payments At Over 500,000 Merchants

Airtel Payments Bank on Tuesday said that it has enabled open loop BHIM UPI based payments at over 500,000 merchant points across India.

It allows consumers to make instant cashless payments from their mobile phones, directly through their savings bank accounts by just scanning a merchant QR code through their preferred BHIM UPI enabled the app.

Airtel Payments Bank users can also use this QR to pay directly through their Savings Bank account or wallets using the Airtel Thanks app.

Anubrata Biswas, MD & CEO - Airtel Payments Bank said, "We are committed to the vision of creating a cashless Indian economy by providing innovative and intuitive solutions with equal focus on consumer and merchant convenience. We are delighted to partner with NPCI to bring BHIM UPI powered payment solutions at millions of merchants across India, enabling seamless and secure digital payments. This is an important step towards our aim of creating a ubiquitous digital payments ecosystem for all consumers."

Airtel said that consumers no longer need to go through the hassle of downloading and maintaining numerous payment apps, and can pay with any BHIM UPI enabled application of their choice.

Dilip Ashbe, MD & CEO, NPCI said, "We believe that there is already a significant shift to a mobile-first strategy with consumers using functionality rich and user-friendly apps for P2P (peer-to-peer) or P2M (peer-to-merchant) payments. Our partnership with Airtel Payments Bank has currently enabled over half a million offline merchants to receive payments through UPI QR Code. This will help consumers to make instant and hassle-free transactions digitally thereby adding to seamless customer experience."

Instead of cluttering the counter with multiple modes of payment acceptance, the merchant can now have a single QR code at their shop, making it convenient for them as well as consumers. Even at the back end, the merchants now only need to manage a single application over having to manage the applications of multiple vendors.

Besides Airtel Payments Bank plans to significantly ramp up its offline merchant base and plans to power at least one million offline merchants with its payment solution over the coming months.

For the unaware, Airtel Payments Bank powered BHIM UPI based payments are also beneficial for the merchants since they can now easily receive payments directly into their bank account, reducing the risk of cash management for them.