The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network, has unveiled new solutions to increase the payment service's digital inclusion, even as it aspires to extend the infrastructure to 100 billion monthly transactions.

A credit line on UPI, UPI Lite X for offline payments and an NFC-enabled Tap & Pay feature, conversational payments via Hello! UPI, and conversational bill payments via BillPay Connect are among the new offerings.

The new offerings come just a day after NPCI CEO Dilip Asbe states at the Global Fintech Festival 2023 that UPI has the ability to increase nearly tenfold and reach a couple of billion transactions per day by 2030.

The NPCI ecosystem, according to Infosys cofounder and non-executive chairman Nandan Nilekani, will be transformational for the country as it transitions from an offline, informal, low-productivity economy to an online, formal hybrid economy as millions of people join the society with digital IDs and mobile connections.

The credit line on UPI will enable consumers to pay for transactions using credit by linking pre-approved digital credit lines from banks. Furthermore, the payment flow for the new functionality will be the same as for existing UPI transactions.

“As they use additional credit, get access to capital and build businesses, we are going to see a huge formalization of the country over the next 20 years. And this could all be possible because of the digital public infrastructure,” says Nilekani.

According to NPCI, 'credit line on UPI' will greatly speed up the process of obtaining, linking, and utilizing credit lines.