NUUP
The National Unified USSD Platform (NUUP) lets you use UPI by dialling *99#, without having to install a proprietary app.
The service is run by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the government-backed private company that also operates the UPI ecosystem itself.
*99# and BHIM
Besides NUUP, NPCI also operates BHIM which is a proprietary app for Android smartphones. The two are linked in the sense that dialling *99# is essentially a different way of accessing your BHIM account. Practically, this means that if you run into issues setting up UPI payments with *99#, you can often work around this by borrowing a proprietary Android phone from someone and installing BHIM on that to link your bank and set up UPI payments. Once done, you can uninstall the app and make payments directly via *99#.
Provider support
While NUUP is theoretically supposed to work on all USSD supporting carriers in India (all the provider apart from Jio), the service is not very well maintained and keeps going down, or, in some cases, doesn't work at all.
| Provider | Officially supported | Actually working |
|---|---|---|
| Airtel | ✔ | ✔ |
| BSNL | ✔ | ✘ |
| Jio | ✘ | ✘ |
| MTNL | ||
| Vi | ✔ | ✔ but can pay only to mobile numbers and not full upi ids. |
Bank support
The NPCI lists 103 banks supporting *99# payments. However, each of them has their own slightly different interface to the service, and not all of them work seamlessly.
This section provides crowdsourced information on which banks have been known to work or not, as experienced by the FSCI community.
Note: Starting 1 October 2025, UPI collect request will no longer be available for individuals although it will still be available for businesses as well as online payments. The ostensible reason is to prevent "fraud" from people misusing the collect request functionality. Specifically, this means it will not be possible to ask people to request money in case adding via UPI ID is not working. Some UPI apps like Paytm and PhonePe have already stopped offering this feature.
| Bank | Available on service | Registration (if UPI PIN not set) | Registration (if UPI PIN already set) | Accepting payment request | Receiving money | Payment to beneficiary | Payment to UPI ID | Payment to Mobile Number | Payment to Account/IFSC | Setting UPI ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City Union Bank | ✔ | ✘ Sends an SMS regarding UPI activation as well as an OTP, but USSD only says to "keep your debit card ready" and doesn't accept further input | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ truncates at `@` and claims "invalid UPI ID" | ✔ | |||
| Federal Bank | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||
| ICICI | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ on Airtel, but ✘ on vi, which truncates at `@` and claims "invalid UPI ID" | ✔ | |||||
| India Post Payments Bank | ✘ Supposedly listed, but not actually present | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | |
| Indian Bank | ✔ | ✘ Allows debit card based registration but goes into loop due to bug with 6 digit PIN vs. 4 digit PIN | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ truncates at `@` and claims "invalid UPI ID" | ✔ | ✔ |
IMPS
An alternative to UPI is to use IMPS with phone number beneficiary (it also allows account number + IFSC) which needs phone number + Bank name only. So if we know someone's phone number and their bank name, we can transfer using IMPS/Net Banking.
Banks with Net Banking where sending money like this is confirmed working,
- Federal Bank
- Bank of Baroda
- Indian Bank - they have both normal IMPS where you wait to add beneficiary, and "IMPS 24x7 - without adding beneficiary" that works instantly
Banks that don't offer this option,
- ICICI Bank - they still ask for MMID in addition to phone number.
- HDFC
- SBI
- City Union Bank (CUB) - they present a large form with lots of details. Specifically, IFSC code and account number seems to be mandatory (mobile number field also there, along with email, but there was no option to enter just the bank name)
Reference: This option was introduced from 1st February 2024 [1] But all banks may not have implemented this in their Net Banking applications yet.