India In Talks With South American & African Nations To Introduce UPI

The Indian government is reportedly in talks with multiple South American and African countries to introduce the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay cards in these countries. 

A senior government official told Livemint that officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) are holding talks with their counterparts as well as high commissions and embassies of these nations.

The person further added that the discussions are at various stages of negotiations and are part of the government’s bid to internationalise UPI.

This comes close on the heels of NPCI International Payments Limited’s (NIPL) chief executive officer (CEO) Ritesh Shukla saying that UPI will double the number of countries where it is operational in the next 12-18 months. 

Recently, reports also said India is in deliberations with countries such as Namibia, Mozambique and Kenya to expand the scope of UPI. 

The move comes as UPI creates new benchmarks even as the government further pushes to scale the platform globally. Just days ago, UPI set a new record by processing more than 1,000 Cr monthly transactions in August 2023. 

Meanwhile, UPI continues to see global adoption. So far, the digital payments platform has already been deployed in countries such as France, Singapore, Nepal, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Singapore, Maldives, Bhutan, and Oman. 

In addition, India has also been in talks with New Zealand to deploy the digital payments system in the Pacific country to improve ease of business between two nations. 

On Monday, the RBI also allowed scheduled commercial banks to offer credit lines to their customers through UPI.