With Flash UPI, make payments 5 times faster!

UPI payments are already India’s favourite way to pay digitally, thanks to how convenient and easy it is to use. But what if we told you that we have found a way to make it better, faster and more convenient for customers while delivering higher success rates and conversions for businesses?

Flash UPI: The Future of Digital Payments

We are excited to announce that the amazing product and engineering team at Cashfree  Payments has built Flash UPI, the most seamless way to collect payments! So, this solution of Flash UPI will power your app users to complete payments 5 times faster. It will also provide 10% higher success rates without redirecting your customers away from your application!

Cashfree Payments has created this solution in partnership with NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) and Axis Bank. We have built it so that it can be useful for mobile-first businesses selling on their own applications, without any redirection to a UPI PSP or to a separate checkout environment.

Capturing Buyer Intent More Effectively

For today’s digital customers, convenience and immediate gratification are critical to their purchase experience. Therefore, digital businesses have been at the forefront of this discovery, noting how their conversion rates are directly proportional to the time taken for a customer to complete a purchase. With conversion rate optimization, A/B tests, and experiments, has evolved some cardinal truths around digital commerce: 

1. Faster checkouts increase conversions
2. Minimizing effort increases conversions
3. More redirections or page loads decrease conversions

Flash UPI represents the best possible version of UPI for faster payments and maximizing conversions. It also represents the progress we have seen as users of UPI over the last few years.

Related Read: Top 6 Digital Checkouts

Generations of UPI – From Collect to Intent

The first avatar of UPI was launched in 2016 and was later named the ‘Collect‘ flow. Users selecting UPI at checkout would be shown a text field. Here, they had to enter their UPI-VPA (Virtual Payment Address) and it would prompt them to check their UPI PSP app. Hence, they would be expected to minimize the browser window/application they were currently on to open their UPI PSP application. Then, they could approve the transaction and enter their UPI PIN to complete the payment process. This made checkout slower, more dependent on the user’s effort and had a user-driven redirection to a different ecosystem.

This is why Collect flows tend to have higher cart abandonment rates and lower conversion rates.

The next generation of UPI flow was UPI Intent. Users no longer needed to enter a Virtual Payment Address; they would simply choose their preferred UPI PSP application. This would automatically redirect users to their chosen UPI app, where they would complete the transaction. Similarly, it would automatically reroute the users back to the earlier application. The improvement here was clear – it was faster (automatically opening the chosen UPI app) and reduced the user effort substantially (no entry to UPI VPA and no need to open the UPI app yourself).

However, it still meant that users would be moved from one application to another. This led to invent of Flash UPI for faster payments.

The Challenge for UPI Payments

Undoubtedly, UPI has witnessed immense popularity and success. Despite that, the payment mode continues to pose a few challenges for Indian businesses in terms of customer experience. First, it has a higher failure rate (especially compared to cards). This is because the redirections often cause breakages and issues in customer experience.

Second, the reliance on UPI PSPs as intermediaries adds another layer of complexity and potential failures. Often the users trying to make payments via UPI experience a pending transaction. There was no way to clearly know whether the payment was going through or not.

Third, businesses that were running the originating apps (the apps that generated the collect or intent payments on UPI) would have NO visibility on why, how, or when the user dropped out.

Flash UPI can resolve the above-mentioned issues by offering faster and smoother payments.

Why Flash UPI by Cashfree Payments is the Solution?

Imagine a truly native, in-app UPI experience where your customers never leave your application to complete their payment. When they click on ‘Pay Now’, they simply have to enter their 4 or 6-digit UPI PIN and the payment is completed. Thus, No redirections and the customer never leaves your application.

That’s what FLash UPI offers, seamless and faster payments!

This ensures a faster, 1-step checkout; a higher success rate; greater customer satisfaction; and a better customer experience. For your business, the most important improvement here is the absolute capture of your customer’s buyer intent.

Use Cases and Benefits of Flash UPI

Flash UPI is a quantum leap ahead of UPI Intent. It will deliver a high-quality payment experience currently unmatched by any other payment mode. At the same time, it will ensure complete security and compliance. So, businesses using an application will be able to offer their end customers – 

1. Fastest Checkout in India Ever = Higher Conversions

Accept payments in a flash (<5 seconds!) with Flash UPI! With a faster checkout, customer buying intent is captured better. This leads to a higher conversion rate and a better customer experience overall. 

2. Better Success Rates = Better Customer Experience

Payment failures cause 33% to 62% of customers to abandon checkout. UPI Apps often face downtimes and payment failures, causing considerable discomfort to customers. With a direct flow, Flash UPI delivers a 10% higher success rate.

Due to its lightning-fast speed and high success rates, Flash UPI easily bridges the gap between the buyer intent being created and captured. This can be very useful for the following use cases: 

1. Cab Aggregators or Transportation Services
   Enable your users to pay seamlessly for their rides directly via UPI. Reduce transaction friction and make it easier for customers to book a ride seamlessly. They will have a payment experience as fast and convenient as ride-booking services themselves!
2. E-commerce
   Don’t let your customer think twice about buying that amazing gadget or spending on a new wardrobe! Use Flash UPI coupled with offers to give your existing customers a premium experience that makes them spend more and generate more value for your brand.
3. Food Delivery
   Don’t let the payment failures derail the munchies! Allow your users to get those burgers, biryanis, or bhaturas at the speed of light with Flash UPI. Increase your conversion rates enabling faster payments with Flash UPI. Drive more value to your partner restaurants and businesses!
4. Quick Commerce
   10-minute delivery doesn’t sound as cool when the checkout process takes a minute. Offer your users an end-to-end experience that is as fast and as powerful as your brand with Flash UPI!

Are you interested? If you want to offer your customers the best possible payment flow and increase your conversions on your mobile app, get in touch with our experts. We will reach out to you and set you up for the future of digital payments with Flash UPI!