New Delhi: From betel leaf And from auto rickshaw drivers to jewelery shops, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is now a ubiquitous payment option used by almost everyone in India. But the central government on Thursday went a step further to expand the reach of UPI, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing during his visit to France that the payment medium would soon be made available in that country.
“India and France have agreed to use UPI in France… It (UPI) will be launched at Eiffel Tower in the coming days, which means Indian tourists will now be able to make rupee payments through UPI at Eiffel Tower. ” “Modi Said at La Seine Musical in Paris.
According to NPCI, developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) – the Reserve Bank of India-backed umbrella organization for digital payments – UPI is a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application. Website,
It combines several banking features – including peer-to-peer (person-to-person) and peer-to-merchant payments (person-to-merchant) through “single click 2 factor authentication” and a single mobile the application allows. Gaining access to multiple bank accounts, thus reducing dependence on cash.
It was launched on 11 April 2016 by Raghuram Rajan, the then governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), with 21 member banks. As per the June 2023 NPCI report on UPI, there are currently 458 participating banks on the platform.
That month, a total of 9.335 billion transactions were recorded using UPI, amounting to a total of Rs. 14.75 lakh crore, NPCI pointed out.
Speaking at the CII Partnership Summit 2023 in March, Anurag Jain, Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Said That India’s real-time digital transactions exceed the combined transactions of the US, Europe and China.
ThePrint tracks the development of the UPI system and the countries where you can use the payments interface.
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Globalizing UPI
On 4th September 2020, NPCI issued a circular to implement UPI ecosystem in India IInternational Merchant Payment Acceptance – A system for enabling transactions with other countries. According to the circular, the deadline was December 31, 2021, but last year it was further extended to September 30.
In February, PhonePe became the first UPI application to integrate and launch UPI International, a feature that allows cross-border payments using Indian bank accounts in five countries – Bhutan, Singapore, Nepal, UAE and Mauritius .
Currently, 16 Indian banks – including Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank, Bank of India and IndusInd Bank Limited – support UPI international payments on PhonePe.
According to media reports, PayTM has also announced its intention to launch UPI International.
On 10 January, NPCI announced that non-resident individuals with bank accounts in India would be able to access UPI using their local phone numbers from 10 countries – Singapore, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, USA, Saudi Arabia, UAE and United Kingdom. As per the circular, the requirement was to have a non-resident bank account in India which could be linked to the local (international) phone number of the individual.
In addition to these measures, the RBI also announced on February 21 that foreigners visiting India from G20 countries would be allowed to make local payments using UPI. For this, passenger merchant outlets at “select international airports” – such as Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi – will be permitted to issue UPI-linked ‘Prepaid Payment Instruments’ (PPI) wallets for payments, said an RBI press release. Will be eligible.
The G20 is an intergovernmental forum consisting of Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United States, India, Russia, South Africa, China, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the European Union.
Peer-to-Peer, Peer-to-Merchant International Payments
Two common transactions through UPI are peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant. Banking industry sources told ThePrint that peer-to-merchant payments are currently accepted internationally in the UAE, Bhutan and Singapore. In case of peer-to-peer payments, foreign inward (Indian receiving money) and foreign outward (Indian sending money abroad) remittances are allowed only to Singapore, where it was launched between UPI and PayNow on February 21. was commissioned through the partnership – a near-instantaneous real-time payment system developed by a consortium of banks in Singapore.
Currently, the RBI allows six banks in India to receive remittances from Singapore – Axis Bank, DBS Bank India, ICICI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Indian Bank and State Bank of India. Meanwhile, four banks – ICICI Bank, Indian Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and State Bank of India – can send money to the Singapore account.
Transaction limit Rs. 60,000/day and peer-to-peer remittances can be done only for “maintenance of relatives abroad” and “gifts”.
In addition to the UPI-PayNow linkage for peer-to-peer transactions, merchants in Singapore can also choose to enable UPI and RuPay acceptance at their stores using QR codes.
On April 21 last year, NPCI International Pvt Ltd (NIPL), a wholly owned subsidiary of NPCI, informed that UPI payments through Neopay, a payments subsidiary of privately owned Mashreq Bank, went live across UAE.
UPI peer-to-merchant payments were also enabled in Bhutan on July 13, 2021. In fact, it was the first country to adopt UPI standards for its QR deployment.
Apart from these three countries, NIPL has also reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Central Bank of Oman, Netherlands-based global payments infrastructure company Terapay and UK-headquartered payment solutions provider PayExpert. It has signed an MoU with Singapore-based fintech company Liquid Group to launch UPI payments in 10 Asian markets – Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Republic of Korea and Japan.
In October last year, NIPL signed an agreement with France-based global payments provider Worldline to drive the adoption of UPI payments in European markets. The first target markets for this collaboration are Switzerland and the Benelux (Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg) countries.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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