UPI, RuPay Cards may soon be adopted by 30 new countries

In a new high for the Indian payment systems, it was notified by the Minister of State for External Affairs Rajkumar Singh that the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) was in talks with roughly 30 countries for initiating the use of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay cards.

The NPCI has deputed NPCI International Payments Limited (NPIL) to hold talks and speed up the negotiation for the adoption of these two systems in foreign lands. The main aim of the talks will be to assist economies in building UPI-like solutions and remodel their digital payments through an interoperable payment system.

Currently, the two methods are prevalent in Singapore, UAE and Bhutan, while Nepal has partly adopted the usage of RuPay cards, but while responding to a query on whether there were any plans to expand the ambit of Rupay and UPI globally, Rajkumar Singh informed, “that with the adoption of UPI applications it would enable the use of RuPay cards by Indian travellers abroad for making purchases and remittances to and from India with efficiency and speed.”

Similarly, the Reserve Bank of India is also working on collaborations between central banks along with agreements between the network, concerned central bank and government agencies. Earlier last month, the NIPL also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with France’s Lyra Network to enable the acceptance of UPI and RuPay Cards in the country. Other than France, the NPIL is also working with various institutions in Japan and China for implementing these systems.

With a focus on digital payments, the UPI platform crossed the $1 trillion-mark transactional value during FY22 and with 330 banks as of date with an average amount of Rs. 1,730 per transaction UPI has seen massive growth in just the past few months becoming the most popular method of digital transactions in the country.