Truecaller Pay UPI-Based Payments Service Launched in Partnership With ICICI Bank

Caller ID application Truecaller on Tuesday announced a partnership with ICICI Bank, to allow people to send and receive payments through the app. Called Truecaller Pay, it leverages the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to power payments from your ICICI Bank account. For now, the Truecaller Pay feature will only be available via Truecaller 8 for Android.

At the press conference to announce the new features, Truecaller CEO and co-founder Alan Mamedi said that the company is now able to show the true potential of Truecaller. "We have been able to build a mobile identity platform and ecosystem that more and more people are relying on a daily basis to build safe and meaningful services on top of," he said.

With Truecaller Pay, you will be able to create a Virtual Payment Address (VPA) that can be used for any UPI-powered transaction. As is the case with any UPI app, you don't need to have an ICICI Bank account to be able to use this VPA or Truecaller Pay. As long as your bank supports UPI, you can use Truecaller Pay to send or receive money from other banks that also support UPI, or to make online payments for things such as Paytm recharges, or recharging your Tata Sky account. Users can also do prepaid recharges or postpaid bill payments using Truecaller Pay.

All the banking and transactional data of the customers is handled by ICICI Bank as per RBI guidelines, and Truecaller will not handle data such as account details, or credit or debit card information of its users.

"We are very excited to launch Truecaller Pay together with ICICI Bank and as a first stop we will offer peer-to-peer solutions right from your contacts," said Nami Zarringhalam, CSO and co-founder at Truecaller.

Truecaller Pay has been designed as a feature of the Truecaller app itself - you won't need to download or install any standalone app. Instead, you only need the Truecaller app, and then, in the profile page, you can tap on Send money through UPI. Then, you just enter the UPI VPA, or the mobile number that you need to pay, and tap Pay. Finally, you'll have to authenticate this through your UPI PIN.

"The bank has played a pivotal role in conceptualising UPI as an initiative along with NPCI and was the first bank to introduce UPI in its mobile app," said Abonty Banerjee, Senior General Manager and Head - Digital Channels at ICICI Bank. "We are delighted to offer our UPI platform to Truecaller. Users will get the benefit of making quick and easy payments to any mobile number. Users can also undertake payments for utility services such as pre-paid recharges and postpaid mobile bills."