How to set up offline UPI Payments with *99# service?

I am sure many of you must have experienced the loss of internet while making some payment through the platforms like Google Pay, PhonePe, Paytm, or any other UPI enabled payment gateway. 

Do you know what should you be doing at this time?

You have to dial *99#, which is a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data). USSD is based on the mobile banking service and could be really helpful at such times. It enables the request made by the user and sends money, changes the UPI PIN, and can check the account balance as well, without any internet connection.

The *99# service is being offered by 83 leading banks in India and 4 telecom service providers in the country. The service could be accessed in 13 different languages, including Hindi and English. 

Here is a step by step guide to setting up the offline UPI payments.

1. Dial *99# from your handset (smartphone or feature phone) from the same number that you are using in UPI registration and linked with the bank
2. Choose the desired language 
3. Then enter your bank name. This will show you a list of bank accounts which are linked to your number
4. Now choose the one which you would be interested to use (press the correct option)
5. After that, enter the last 6 digits of your debit card 
6. Also, you will have to enter the expiry date of the card
7. Once you have successfully set it up, you can easily make UPI payments without an Internet connection, 

Here is a step by step guide to making offline UPI payments:

1. Dial *99# on your phone 
2. Now enter 1 to send money
3. Now enter the UPI ID/ phone number/ bank account details of the person you would like to send money to
4. Now enter the total amount you would like to transfer 
5. Then enter your UPI PIN.
6. Once this process is done, your payment will be successfully made, 
7. This is to note that earlier, each time when you use to redeem the service of *99#, you were charged around Rs. 0.50 per transaction. But it has been updated and the service of USSD will not charge any paisa from the user. The action has been taken as per the direction of TRAI on 7th April 2022 

By the time of writing, the upper limit on this service is Rs. 5,000 per transaction.