In a milestone movement, India and France have agreed to use Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in the European nation. This comes during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Paris. PM Modi said from atop the Eiffel Tower that Indian tourists will soon be able to make Rupee payments in France using UPI
The National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI) which offers UPI services had signed an MoU with France’s secure online payment system, Lyra, in 2022. Before France, India had signed an agreement with several other countries to allow users to make cross-border transactions. A look at all the other countries where the UPI system has been adopted
In 2021, BHIM UPI, the Indian government’s digital payment app, was launched in Bhutan, making it the first country, in India’s immediate neighbourhood, to use the BHIM app for mobile-based payments and “to adopt UPI standards for its QR deployment”. The launch fulfilled the commitment made by the two countries during PM Modi's visit to Bhutan in 2019
In September 2021, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Reserve Bank of India announced plans to link Singapore’s PayNow and India’s UPI real-time payment systems. Earlier this year, UPI, which has allowed for quick digital payments through apps like BharatPe and Paytm, and its equivalent network in Singapore called PayNow, were integrated to enable faster remittances between the two countries at a competitive rate
Last year, Nepal adopted UPI to bolster digital transactions. To deploy UPI in Nepal, the NPCI’s global arm, NPCI International Payments (NIPL), partnered with its Nepalese counterpart, the Gateway Payments Service (GPS), and Bengaluru-based Manam Infotech. In 2021, NIPL partnered with Singapore and Bhutan to accept UPI-based payments
In October 2022, Oman became the seventh nation to accept payments through UPI and RuPay Cards. This came after New Delhi and Muscat reached a consensus to expand the Indian digital payment ecosystem to the Gulf region. A formal agreement in this regard was signed between the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Central Bank of Oman (CBO)
In April 2022, NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), the International arm of the National Payment Corporation of India, partnered with the Mashreq Bank’s NEOPAY to enable UPI-based payment in the UAE. BHIM UPI was live at NEOPAY terminals, across the Gulf nation
In 2021, NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) partnered with Merchantrade Asia, a fintech company and Malaysia’s largest Money Services Business operator and fast-growing e-Money issuer, to offer Real-Time Remittances to India. Anyone from the Merchantrade network countries can do real-time remittance to India using UPI apps such as BHIM, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, etc
In September 2021, NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) partnered with Liquid Group Pte. Ltd. (Liquid Group), a leading cross-border digital payments provider, to enable UPI QR-based payments acceptance in 10 markets across North Asia and Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan
NIPL has forged a partnership with payments solutions provider PayXpert to internationalise the acceptance of its payment solutions in the UK. This collaboration will make the Indian payment solutions available in the UK on all PayXpert’s android point-of-sale (POS) devices for in-store payments, starting with UPI-based QR code payments and later integrating the possibility for RuPay card payments