CCAvenue now enables UPI payments through the Intent flow via UPI supported apps

UPI (Unified Payments Interface) transactions have been substantially growing since its launch in April 2016. According to the recent data published by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), total number of UPI transactions in April 2018 has grown to 190.1M, i.e. around 27 times higher than in the same month last year. The amount transacted has increased by 12% to Rs. 27,021.9 crores, i.e. 12 times higher than in the corresponding month last year.

UPI has been a game changer for the Indian payment ecosystem and we at CCAvenue strongly believe that UPI is the future of payments in India. We had launched UPI acceptance for businesses and have been offering P2M payments (customer to merchant) on UPI since 2016. The conventional UPI collect flow, allows bank account holders to transact using a Virtual Payment Address (VPA), without entering additional bank information.

CCAvenue now announces the new UPI Intent flow for payments on native mobile applications using existing UPI supported apps installed on their phones like Phonepe, Whatsapp, BHIM, Tez etc., thereby avoiding the need to use multiple apps (merchant, SMS, UPI app) for payments.

Let's first take a look at the conventional collect flow:

Customer selects UPI as the payment mode in merchant app/website
Customer enters the VPA (Virtual Payment Address) on the UPI application
Customer receives a push notification and/or SMS for the collect request
Customer accepts the collect request
Customer enters the UPI PIN / MPIN
Customer gets confirmation of the payment being successful on the app/website

The conventional collect flow is lengthy and could be a little tedious for the customer as it involves many background API calls and SMS notifications with delayed delivery may leave the end customer with an unsatisfactory user experience. The UPI Intent flow eases the process considerably and improves the entire user experience making it lot more smoother.

Here's a look at the UPI Intent flow:

Customer selects UPI as the payment mode in merchant app/website
Customer is shown the list of UPI apps installed on their phone that support intent flow
Customer selects their preferred UPI application
UPI App opens with pre-populated payment details
Customer enters the UPI PIN / MPIN to complete the transaction
Customer gets confirmation of the payment being successful on the app/website

Benefits of using UPI Intent:

Customers need not remember and enter VPA
Customers don't have to handle push/SMS notifications anymore
Customers no longer have to juggle 3 apps (merchant, SMS, UPI app) while doing a transaction
Improved payment process leads to higher conversion rate, decrease in abandoned carts, and shorter time to complete the payment
Ease of making payments results in an optimal user experience for customers

Most of the UPI apps have added support for intent flow, including BHIM, PhonePe, Tez, Whatsapp etc. and various UPI enabled bank apps.

UPI Intent flow is currently supported only on Android devices. The best part is that you do not have to write a single line of extra code to add support for this! The existing web/mobile app integration automatically supports UPI Intent flow.

CCAvenue is an end-to-end PCI-DSS Compliant payment-processing solution provider, catering to nearly 3 million merchants across all payments businesses. With its path-breaking technology in the Fintech space, CCAvenue is committed to redefine user experience, improve transaction success rates and increase the earning potential of web merchants exponentially.

Our comprehensive platform offers business enhancement tools that provide unparalleled product differentiation and are meticulously designed to expand the customer reach of our web merchants, taking their online businesses to the next level.