Time for UPI to break language, location barriers: GPay’s Sharath Bulusu

While Unified Payments Interface, commonly referred to as UPI, has been a resounding success worldwide, more work is required to break barriers of language, location, and gender, said Sharath Bulusu, Director, Product Management, Google Pay on Friday.

Speaking to IANS on the sidelines of the company’s event in the national capital, Bulusu called for reaching out to a wider user base who don’t have access to digital payments.

“UPI became a global success, but there is still a lot more growth to happen. There are still many segments of users who don’t have access to digital payments, and digital finance,” Bulusu said.

“We must do a lot to break down barriers, whether it is language, background, location or gender. We must think about how to do it responsibly and inclusively using good design. But I think global recognition makes it easier for people to have confidence to join UPI,” he added.

Developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in 2016, UPI is an Indian instant payment system that facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions. UPI is active in more than 10 countries, and many are in talks to implement it.

Bulusu said that everyone must get equal access to digital technologies or digital platforms and the same quality of services.

“It shouldn’t matter that you are a farmer in some corner of rural India, or you are a salaried employee sitting in a city like Delhi”.

Bulusu attributed the success of UPI to “joint efforts of private companies, NPCI as a network, RBI as a regulator, and government backing, alongside innovative private applications”.

“This is how the industry can truly make a difference to aid digital inclusion,” he noted.

Bulusu also stressed the importance and responsibility of informing people of ways to stay safe online.

“This goes back to the history of every new development; we have had to educate users to keep their passwords safe, protect the PIN for their debit cards, and safeguard the PIN for their UPI apps. Similarly, we must educate users at every step because the digital world is changing rapidly. It is unfair to expect users to figure it out on their own. It's our responsibility to ensure we educate and empower users," he told IANS.

Meanwhile, Bulusu informed about onboarding partners like Aditya Birla Finance and Muthoot Finance with Google to “do inclusive and responsible credit at scale in India”.

Google on Thursday announced that it has tied up with Aditya Birla Finance, and Muthoot Finance to offer personal loans and gold-backed loans.

The tech giant also partnered with credit score company CIBIL “to make sure that people across the board have access to their credit report and they can understand it in a simple, intuitive way", Bulusu said.