Skip to main content

Missed call to pay on KooKoo using UPI

By C Chaitanya
The launch of UPI can be considered as a watershed moment. This has opened up a whole new way of sending and receiving payments and will surely lead to a lot of innovation.
The API is really well designed for a government effort. But guess it was expected given the great efforts put in by a lot of volunteers. So,hats off to them.
Whenever innovative things happen, you know KooKoo is not far behind :)
So, in this blog post, I will show you an easy way to collect payments using a missed call.

1. Register for a KooKoo missed call account. and specify an app URL. You will receive a missed call number.
2. When some one calls on your missed call number, KooKoo makes a http request to your URL with the caller details.
3. Build UPI payment request URL based on specification provided by NCPI. So lets say your VPA is ozonetel@somebank and you need to request Rs.2, your request will be something like, upi://pay?pa=ozonetel@somebank&am=2.
4. Send this link in an SMS back to the caller. The caller can use this link to pay for the amount.

Wanna see this in action, just give a  
Missed Call to +918030088469(080-30088469)

I have made some small adjustments. Since the upi:// protocol is still not recognized by messaging apps, I have redirected through a web URL so that the link becomes clickable. Just click on the link in the SMS and pay. This assumes you have an app installed which understands UPI(This is most of the bank apps)

This is a very basic use case which we have showcased. You can now use a phone number to collect payments. You can even do IVR payments. 

UPI is still in early stages. This is really good for P2P payments, but the merchant payment piece is still lagging in some respects. I am sure, things will be resolved soon.

Thanks:

Popular posts from this blog

Google's approach to business communication

By C Chaitanya
 Google has been making silent moves in the business communication space. Google has mostly lost the instant messaging wars. But it does not want to lose the business communication war. WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook have been making their own moves to enable businesses to reach their customers through their channels. Its all about who has control over the communication channels. Especially communication which leads to business. That's where the money is. Currently, Google is the king of search and most online transactions start with a Google search. FB, Amazon, Apple and others want to change that. They want the search to start on their properties. And they have started making the moves. WhatsApp business allows small businesses to conduct their transactions on WhatsApp. FB and Instagram have long supported small businesses to manage their business on their channels. Apple has also made some nice moves with Apple business chat. They have integrated a whole shopping expe...
Read more

Telugu ASR speech data collection

By C Chaitanya
Image Source: IIIT-H Developing an indigenous ASR for Indian languages has been a goal for us since a long time. In that regard we have been experimenting a lot, trying out various neural network architectures.  While doing these experiments we found that there was no good dataset for Indian languages. While discussing with IIIT professors we got to know that the government of India was also exploring options to generate a good dataset. We immediately offered our help and our platform for this endeavor. So, as a starting step we have come up with a few campaigns to encourage users to donate speech data. We wanted to make it fun, so our first few campaigns are along the lines of JAMs(Just a Minute speech topics) etc. A topic will be provided and you need to speak for a minute on that topic. We have started this campaign for college students to start with. Of course anyone can participate and contribute their data. The more the merrier :) We will adding a lot more innovative ways ut...
Read more

Ozonetel. Take 2, The Text Edition

By C Chaitanya
Ever since we introduced cloud telephony to India in 2009, Ozonetel has always been known as the go to startup for cloud telephony requirements like cloud call centers and virtual numbers. Voice has been our mainstay for a long time and it will continue to be so in the future too. But starting this month, we at Ozonetel have decided to have an increased focus on text based communication channels in addition to voice channels. It's not that we did not support these channels earlier. We already supported, chat and some email functionality. But it has been in bits and pieces only. But starting this month text channels, including email, chat and social media will become First Class Citizens in our stack. They will get the same love that our voice channels get. Unsplash           To achieve this we have planned several upgrades to our platform which will unfold over the coming weeks. Here is a sneak peak of what we are planning. Built in Contact Manager: This has bee...
Read more