Payment rails
VPA (Virtual Payment Address)
Indian identifier of the form name@bank, resolved by the UPI directory to a real bank account.
A VPA hides the account number behind a readable identifier. The UPI infrastructure resolves that VPA to the underlying account at payment time, avoiding the need to share full bank details.
The same abstraction exists elsewhere in other forms: the PIX key in Brazil, the phone number on PayNow or PromptPay. Its value is not cosmetic: it massively reduces entry errors, which are the leading cause of failed payouts on classic bank rails.