UPI Platforms Must Adopt ODR System, or No OnBoarding New Customer: NPCI

September 2022 is likely to bring in some new turns in the way of implementing the online dispute resolution system by the National Payments Corporation of India. The NPCI is planning to add a new feature of a real-time payment dispute resolution system for the United Payment Interface (UPI) that is being actively worked on recently.

Dilip Asbe, the NPCI MD and CEO said that he is expecting that the new feature is going to resolve 80-90% of the payment failures in real-time. He also referred to a report by the Hindu Business Line, that says over the next three months, it is expected that 80-90% of the disputes regarding the payment issues will be promptly solved online.

UPI has brought a revolution in the digital payment system, since its launch in 2016, recording 595 crore transactions in the last month, which registered 6% month-to-month (MOM) from April 2022.

More and more users are joining the UPI payment every day and in case of a failed or disputed transaction, the customer had to connect to their or the bank’s customer care to solve the issue, which is a time-consuming process. Replacing that time consuming and patience consuming process, the new dispute redressal mechanism is going to provide instant dispute resolution assistance in the UPI app itself.

In a circular dated 11th April 2022, NCPI instructed the UPI systems participants to implement this ODR system by 30th September 2022. The circular further stated that, if any participant does not comply with it, the NPCI would not let them onboard any new customer from 01st October 2022.

In this mechanism, the payment body has asked the banks, payment service providers and third-party applications to introduce an online dispute resolution (ODR) system. NPCI has buckled up to work on several innovations such as recurring payments for UPI Autopay, voice-operated payment and many more.

Presently Google Pay and PhonePe are the leading companies in the UPI transaction ecosystem. The UPI transactions value witnessed an increase in use at the rate of 97.5% in just one year.