Within weeks of govt's Aadhaar Pay launch, Samsung Pay goes live with UPI

On Monday, Samsung India announced the availability of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on its flagship mobile payments service, Samsung Pay, in India.

With the introduction of UPI, Samsung Pay now integrates card payments, mobile wallets and UPI on one app. Moreover, the transactions made by users through UPI on Samsung Pay would be facilitated through Axis Bank.

With the launch of UPI on Samsung Pay, users can create their unique virtual addresses, enabling them to make seamless bank-to-bank transfers.

Further, according to a press statement from the company, a unique benefit of enabling UPI on the Samsung Pay app is the integration with the users’ address book, which then identifies existing accounts on the contact list.

@pingpay is the UPI handle assigned to Samsung Pay.

UPI is a payment system that powers multiple bank accounts on a single mobile application (of any participating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund-routing and merchant payments under one hood.

This would also cater to the ‘peer-to-peer’ collect request, where users can request for payments from their contacts, adding to the convenience of Samsung Pay consumers.

At the launch, Dilip Asbe, Chief Operating Officer, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), said,

 “We are excited to magnify UPI’s reach by going live on Samsung Pay. This initiative will surely contribute towards assisting our objective of providing convenience and safety to the customers while they make payments. We congratulate Samsung Pay and Axis Bank for emerging as one of the first UPI adopters in this segment.”

While Rajiv Anand, Executive Director - Retail Banking, Axis Bank, added,

 Samsung Pay is a simple and secure way to pay using the existing point-of-sale (PoS) network. The addition of UPI to Samsung Pay, in association with NPCI, makes it an even more powerful proposition for customers to transfer money and make payments.

Launched in March this year, Samsung Pay, works on three levels of security—fingerprint authentication, card tokenisation, and Samsung’s defense-grade mobile security platform, Samsung KNOX.

At present, Samsung Pay works with Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI Cards, Citibank and Standard Chartered Bank.

To launch Samsung Pay, a user needs to swipe up on an eligible Samsung Galaxy smartphone, select the card, authenticate using a fingerprint or PIN and bring the phone near the Point of Sale terminal.

Samsung Pay works with Samsung’s patented Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology as well as with Near Field Communication (NFC).

Just this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti, launched Aadhaar Pay, BHIM Aadhaar-based mobile app (Aadhaar Pay or BHIM Aadhaar), which will allow consumers to pay through their biometric data, linked to their Aadhaar.

At the same time, Aadhaar Pay doesn’t require the customers to carry their smartphone. Customers just need to input their Aadhaar number, select a bank and put in their biometric to validate the transaction, hence, disrupting the use of smartphones for making payments in the country.

On a side note, the Aadhaar Pay platform might also help merchants reduce their costs of deploying digital payments by disrupting PoS, and requiring only a biometric scanner.