Has this ever happened to you that you are in the middle of sending money online using Google Pay, Paytm, PhonePe, or any other UPI payment service, and your Internet connection stops working for some reason? If yes, then *99#, a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) based mobile banking service, can be really helpful to you. It lets you request and send money, change UPI PIN, and even check account balance without an internet connection.
The *99# service brings banking services to everyone across the country. It is offered by 83 leading banks and 4 telecom service providers and can be accessed in 13 different languages including Hindi and English. Here’s how you can set it up and make offline UPI payments.
Set up offline UPI payments
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Dial 99# on your smartphone or feature phone. But, make sure you are using the same phone number to make this call that has been linked to your bank account otherwise this service won’t work.
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Then, choose your desired language and enter your bank name.
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You will be shown a list of bank accounts that are linked to your number, so choose the one that you want to use by pressing the correct option.
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Now, enter the last 6 digits of your debit card alongside the expiry date.
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Once you have successfully set it up, you can make UPI payments without an Internet connection, as explained in the next steps.
Make offline UPI payments
- Dial *99# on your phone and enter 1 to send money.
- Choose your desired option and enter the UPI ID/ phone number/ bank account number of the person you want to send money to.
- Then, enter the amount and your UPI PIN.
- Once done, your payment will be successfully made, and you will be charged a maximum of Rs. 0.50 per transaction for using the *99# service.
Currently, the upper limit on this service is Rs. 5,000 per transaction. Do try this out and let us know in the comments if this was useful.
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