Microsoft app Kaizala joins UPI

Microsoft became the latest global technology major to jump on to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) bandwagon as it enabled digital payments through its group communications app Kaizala.

Earlier, Google India’s Tez app and Facebook-owned WhatsApp had enabled UPI-based payments, and Amazon Pay, it is believed, may soon join in.

Microsoft’s partners are Yes Bank and wallet player MobiKwik. Users of Kaizala will have the option of making peer-to-peer payments in one-to-one and group chat conversations through the MobiKwik wallet.

Rajiv Kumar, corporate vice president, office product group, Microsoft, said the payments enablement came in response to feedback from Kaizala users.

“When we launched Microsoft Kaizala for India in July 2017, we provided consumers as well as businesses with a secure chat platform to collaborate and be productive, on the go. Microsoft Kaizala is used by thousands of organisations across different industry verticals for their day-to-day workflows today and is growing. Payment transactions within the app was a key demand from our users for getting work done and we are happy to offer it today in collaboration with YES Bank and MobiKwik,” he said.

Launched in August 2016, UPI is a bank account-to-bank account payment feature that allows money to be transferred using details no more than a phone number. In March 2018, the volume of UPI transactions stood at 178.05 million, up 4% from February 2018 and the value stood at Rs 24,172.6 crore, 26.4% higher than the month-ago figure.

Digital payments in India, currently estimated at around $200 billion, are projected to rise five-fold in the next five years to touch $1 trillion, according to an estimate made by Credit Suisse. At this point, the value of digital payments will rise from around 10% right now to around 25%, the study adds.

Growing steadily since the launch of the BHIM or Bharat Interface for Money app and by leaps and bounds since Google Tez took it up, the UPI channel has overtaken mobile wallets in terms of the monthly value of transactions, leading to a number of non-bank players joining the UPI ecosystem.

Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt. Ltd.