Indus OS, India’s own smartphone operating system, and YES BANK, India’s 4th largest private sector bank announced a partnership to launch the first-of-its-kind integrated UPI payment platform. Through this partnership, for the first-time ever Indian consumers can access an OS-integrated framework designed for the UPI payment platform, without the hassle of downloading and storing an external app. Indian consumers can conveniently use the UPI payment platform directly on the SMS/ Messaging and Dialler interface, and even on third party apps. The payment platform is expected to launch within this quarter.
On the partnership, Rakesh Deshmukh, co-Founder and CEO of Indus OS said, “This year, one of our focus areas is to empower the ecosystem with OS-integrated innovations that allow for mass applicability of initiatives launched under the ‘Digital India’ program. Our partnership with YES BANK, who have already created a success with its existing UPI framework, aims to further drive up the existing growth rate of UPI-based transactions. The OS-integrated UPI payment platform built by us allows for more deep and contextual integration with the smartphone experience. With Indus OS’ technological know-how and YES BANK’s expertise in banking, the output will surely be a success and set high benchmarks in the digital banking space. This will be a major step towards our mission to facilitate Govt. to citizen services for a billion Indians.”
Rakesh further added, “Last month, highest UPI transactions were recorded since its launch. Our aim is to help our current and future user base, who hail from across different parts of the country, and from varied socio-economic backgrounds, conveniently access the UPI payment platform. We hope this will help grow the transaction volumes further.”
Commenting on the partnership, Ritesh Pai, Chief Digital Officer, YES BANK said, “YES BANK remains committed to the vision of a ‘less-cash economy’. We are constantly looking at ways to revolutionise digital products and solutions. As a leader in the UPI ecosystem, we are very excited to partner with Indus OS, the only operating system made for the Indian masses, to make the whole UPI experience more contextual. Integrating UPI into the mobile OS will help in creating multiple use cases for payments and spur the adoption of UPI in our country.”
YES BANK has taken a lead in evangelizing the digital payments infrastructure in India and was the first bank to actively partner with merchants on UPI. YES BANK is currently responsible for close to 35% all UPI transactions in the country, and over 80% of the merchant transactions done on the UPI ecosystem.
Currently, over 10,000 online and offline merchants are being powered by YES BANK’s UPI payments solutions; and there have been over 20 million downloads of such merchant-partnered apps and over 5 million YES BANK powered Virtual Payment Addresses (VPAs).
Some examples of its uses:
OS-integrated UPI payment platform will enable a deeper and a more contextual user experience. For example:
- The Indus Keyboard will have a ₹ symbol through which users can initiate UPI transactions within the messaging/chatting app. They can directly transfer money to the person they are chatting with by simply clicking the ₹ symbol. the user they are messaging/chatting with. This will work on SMS and on third party messaging apps such as WhatsApp.
- The OS level AI will also be able to sense the user’s intent to make a payment, and it will contextually suggest payments through UPI directly in the messaging applications.
- Indus Contacts App – The contacts app on any smartphone running Indus OS will allow users to send money directly to anyone in their contact list
This development also comes soon after Indus OS announced its partnership to launch the first ever Aadhaar-authenticated OS. Indus OS is working towards linking both; the OS-integrated UPI payment platform and Aadhaar-authenticated OS to ensure a highly secure framework. This unique innovation will further enable a trusted and simplified range of transactions for the consumers.
YES BANK, India’s fourth largest private sector Bank with a pan India presence across all 29 states and 7 Union Territories of India, headquartered in the Lower Parel Innovation District (LPID) of Mumbai, is the outcome of the professional & entrepreneurial commitment of its Founder Rana Kapoor and its Top Management team, to establish a high quality, customer centric, service driven, private Indian Bank catering to the future businesses of India.
YES BANK has adopted international best practices, the highest standards of service quality and operational excellence, and offers comprehensive banking and financial solutions to all its valued customers.
YES BANK has a knowledge driven approach to banking, and offers a superior customer experience for its retail, corporate and emerging corporate banking clients. YES BANK is steadily evolving as the Professionals’ Bank of India with the long term mission of becoming “INDIA’s FINEST QUALITY BIG BANK by 2020”.
Indus OS is India’s operating system. Made in India, for Indians – this operating system is built on the three pillars of innovation, simplification and content. Indus OS was launched in May 2015 and has quickly climbed to the #2 OS spot in India, overtaking global giants such as Apple’s iOS & Microsoft’s Windows.
Indus OS’ vision is to digitally connect 1 billion people in the emerging markets with a smartphone ecosystem of their choice. Indus OS also has its very own app market place called App Bazaar with over 50,000 applications available in 12 regional languages and English. The company has a team of over 100 employees, with over 80% of the team dedicated towards technology & R&D. Indus OS is also constantly striving to adapt its existing portfolio and introduce new features aligned with government initiatives, especially geared towards supporting the roadmap of Digital India.
Indus OS has received Series A funding from Omidyar Network, VenturEast and JSW Ventures, and is angel funded by Hari Padmanabhan, Mayank Singhal from Temasek Holdings, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal from Snapdeal, Amit Gupta and Naveen Tiwari from Inmobi and Pranay Chulet from Quikr.
Key standout features on Indus OS:
| Feature | What it does? |
| Indus Swipe | Patented feature that lets users translate/transliterate any text from English to the selected regional language and vice versa with a simple swipe. |
| Indus Keyboard | Patented keyboard with consonants, alphabets, in-built word & matra prediction in the chosen regional language |
| Indus Reader (TTS) | ‘Text to speech’, to convert any English text into audio in their native language with one click (transcends across third party apps) |
| Recharge on Indus Dialer | Dialer integrated Balance tracking, analytics & one touch recharge feature built for the 95% of the Indian mobile users who use prepaid connection |
| App Bazaar | A marketplace with 50,000 + apps for native language users; including global applications like Skype and Twitter in regional languages |
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All features are available in English and 12 Indian languages (Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Odia, Assamese, Punjabi, Kannada, Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu); and TTS in 8 languages |
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