Consistent efforts are being made to expand the usage of India’s digital payment systems globally to enable seamless cross-border transactions as well as empower Indian tourists abroad. NIPL (NPCI International Payments Limited), which deploys the RuPay and UPI payment systems outside India, is forging partnerships with countries like Singapore, UAE, Malaysia, France etc. to use India’s payment systems. The latest entrant in the list is the BENELUX markets – Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – and Switzerland.
India has been making significant strides in expanding the network of its digital payment systems like RuPay, UPI (Unified Payments Interface), etc. globally, with Europe being the latest region to accept India’s payment systems. Other countries that have embraced different forms of Indian payment systems include France, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Singapore, Maldives, Bhutan, and Oman. This implies that Indians will now be able to make payments through UPI, RuPay etc. in these countries.
These global partnerships have come through as NIPL (NPCI International Payments Limited) has been forging partnerships with different countries to build a huge acceptance network for RuPay and UPI, which will allow Indian travelers to make payments via these channels in their destination country of travel.
NIPL was incorporated in April 2020 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), devoted for deployment of RuPay and UPI outside of India.
Global adoption of UPI: Partners reaching agreement with NIPL.
Announcement
Entity partnering with UPI network
Countries
July 2021
Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan
Bhutan
September 2021
Monetary Authority of Singapore, PayNow
Singapore
August 2021
Malaysia
September 2021
Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan
November 2021
UAE
February 2022
Gateway Payment Services, Manam Infotech
Nepal
April-August 2022
LuLu Financial, NEOPAY (Mashreq Bank)
UAE
June 2022
France
August-September 2022
United Kingdom
October 2022
Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland
October 2022
Oman
Recent developments – acceptance of India’s UPI in different markets:-
Nepal:-
Nepal became the first foreign country to deploy UPI as a payment platform. NIPL partnered Gateway Payments Service (GPS), an authorised payment system operator in Nepal, and Bengaluru-based Manam Infotech. UPI will be deployed in Nepal as a digital public benefit to bolster interoperable real-time person-to-person (P2P) and to-merchant (P2M) payment transactions.
Bhutan:-
Bhutan has become the first country to adopt India’s UPI standards for its quick response (QR) code. It is also the second country after Singapore to have BHIM-UPI acceptance at merchant locations. On July 13, 2021, UPI was made available to the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan. BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) is India’s digital payment application that works through UPI, a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application.
Europe:-
NIPL has entered into a partnership with European payment services facilitator Worldline, with the intention of expanding acceptance of Indian payment channels across Europe. Under the partnership, Worldline’s QR code-based mechanism will allow merchants’ Point-of-Sale (PoS) systems in Europe to accept UPI payments from Indians using their mobile phones.
At a later stage, the Indian customers will also be able to use their RuPay debit or credit cards to make payments in Europe.
Apart from enabling Indians to travel hassle-free and enjoy seamless payments infrastructure, this step will also augment the customer-related benefits available to European merchants due to an increase in footfall and spending from Indian tourists.
In it’s press release, NIPL stated that it will target markets such as BENELUX – Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – and Switzerland. It will expand further with the roll-out of Worldline QR in more European countries.
UK:-
To further strengthen its cross-border payment solutions, TerraPay, a leading global payments infrastructure group announced its partnership with NIPL on September 22, 2022. This partnership intends to enable Indian customers and merchants in India with an active UPI ID to make and accept cross-border payments seamlessly by leveraging TerraPay’s agile infrastructure and the UPI network.
Oman:-
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Central Bank of Oman (CBO) and NIPL in October 2022 will enable Indian RuPay cards and the UPI platform in Oman to facilitate seamless digital remittances, which will benefit Indian workers and professionals.
According to the Indian Embassy in Oman, there are about 624,000 Indians in Oman, of which about 483,901 are workers and professionals as of May 2021.
France:-
France-based payment services provider Lyra Network signed an agreement with the NIPL, allowing students and tourists to make payments through UPI.
UAE:-
NIPL has partnered with LuLu Financial Holding, Mashreq Bank, and Network International in UAE to enable UPI payments. On April 21, 2022, UPI was launched in the country through Mashreq’s NeoPay.
Singapore:-
In July 2022, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) signed an agreement with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to implement interoperability between UPI and PayNow. The UPI-PayNow linkage will enable users of each of the two fast payment systems to make instant, low-cost fund transfers on a reciprocal basis without a need to get onboarded onto the other payment system.
PayNow is the fast payment system of Singapore, which enables peer-to-peer funds transfer service, available to retail customers through participating banks and Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NFIs) in the country. It enables users to send and receive instant funds from one bank or e-wallet account to another in Singapore by using just their mobile number, Singapore NRIC/FIN, or VPA.
Malaysia:-
In 2021, Malaysia’s Merchantrade Asia, collaborated with NIPL, to allow sending remittances through UPI to India.
India’s digital payment systems: UPI accounts for major chunk of transactions
Meanwhile, the UPI’s popularity in India has been expanding ever since its launch in 2016. As per a recent report by Worldline titled ‘India Digital Payments Report’, India saw 20.57 billion online transactions worth INR 36.08 trillion in the second quarter of financial year (FY) 2022. The country’s online transactions were processed through debit and credit cards, prepaid payment instruments like mobile wallets and prepaid cards, and UPI which includes P2M (person to merchant) and P2P (person to person) transactions.
The report stated that UPI P2P accounted for 49 percent in volume and 67 percent in value but in terms of merchants’ transactions, UPI P2M emerged as the preferred payment mode with a market share of 34 percent in volume and 17 per cent in terms of value.
According to the NPCI data, the number of UPI transactions increased by over three percent to 6.78 billion in September 2022 from 6.57 billion in August 2022.
In September 2022, UPI recorded a new all-time high in transaction volume, totaling INR 11.16 trillion.
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