ICICI Bank launches ‘Unified Payments Interface’ for its mobile banking applications

ICICI Bank, India’s largest private sector bank, has launched ‘Unified Payments Interface’ (UPI) on two of its customer facing mobile banking applications - ‘Pockets’ and ‘iMobile’. UPI enables bank account holders (of banks participating in UPI) to send and receive money using a Virtual Payment Address (VPA) without entering additional bank account details.

UPI is available on ‘iMobile’, the bank’s mobile banking application for its customers and on ‘Pockets’, its digital bank for peer-to-peer and ecommerce payments by users including non-ICICI Bank customers. It is the simplest mode of making payments that aims to provide users with the convenience of completing transactions in lesser steps than earlier, thereby reducing the transaction time. Anyone, including non-ICICI Bank customers can access UPI by creating their VPA on ‘Pockets’.

ICICI Bank is the most comprehensive player in the Indian mobile banking industry. It is the numero uno bank in FY16 with close to Rs 1 trillion worth of transactions in mobile banking. It was the first bank to launch a mobile banking application in India, iMobile in 2008.