Promoting the use of UPI to make donations safer

 As we all know very well, thousands of temples, churches, mosques, gurudwaras and other places of worship in India play a vital role in people’s lives. The quality of cleanliness in these places and their immediate environment matters a lot to our self-esteem and to national pride. Some places are exceptionally good and some need attention.

These institutions collect thousands of crores per year through their hundis and collection boxes. A part of these donations helps maintain these places of worship. Ensuring that the donations are transparent, legal, safe, and efficient is a valuable goal. Eliminating fraud, misuse, and corruption is equally essential. We must promote the use of the Universal Payment Interface (UPI) to provide for a safe way to donate.

UPI need not be the only route for donations, but it should carry a significant part of the load. The recent safeguarding of bank URIs on the Internet by introducing the domain name “.bank” is a brilliant move. Now banks can be asked to identify accounts eligible to receive charitable or religious donations by ensuring suitable labels are part of the account name - such as temple, church, masjid, gurudwara. They can also verify if the account holder has a PAN number and is authorized to receive donations from abroad or not.

Places of worship can then publicise the UPI IDs for receiving donations and publish QR codes for the purpose through various channels.

This will facilitate legal donations from all corners of the nation to all places of worship, big or small. It will also increase legal donations from NRIs and OCIs.

This need not involve any big effort by the Govt. Suitable guidance to the National Payments Corporation which implements URI, and to banks will achieve a lot. However, publicising the effort and making the nation aware of the issues involved are important.

There are many low hanging fruits we can easily pluck to improve India’s image in the world. This is one of them.

Srinivasan Ramani