Japan May Join The Growing List Of Countries Accepting India’s UPI System

At a time when the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is pushing for acceptance of United Payments Interface (UPI) services in foreign countries, Japan is mulling to join the UPI payment system and promote cooperation on the digital identity system.

In an interview with Wion, Japanese Digital Minister Kono Taro said that Japan is looking at joining the UPI system and working on mutually recognising digital identities as well.

Taro is of the view that UPI is a very convenient payment system which can increase interoperability between governments. “It could be another standard of cross-border payment,” he said.

“G7 agrees to establish a new framework with a new secretariat on cross-border data flow and we are hoping that the Indian government will join this framework,” Taro added.

“Almost every global forum, whether G20, SCO or G7, wherever we are presenting PM Narendra Modi’s Digital India vision, has very good traction…I thank the Japanese digital minister he has accepted PM Modi’s very deep and extensive vision of Digital India.” Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday in an official statement.

In February 2022, Nepal became the first country in the world, apart from India, to adopt UPI. The digital-payments service has been deployed in several Middle Eastern countries as well.

Further, in February this year, cross-border linkage between UPI and Singapore’s PayNow was also completed to facilitate cross-border payments.

Earlier this year, NPCI also allowed non-resident account types including non-resident external (NRE) and non-resident ordinary (NRO) accounts with international mobile numbers to use UPI.

Payment giants such as PhonePe, Paytm have also started taking measures to gain from India’s UPI expansion. PhonePe integrated UPI International with its app earlier this year, under which users can make payments in foreign currencies directly from their bank accounts.

Recently, a Paytm spokesperson said that the fintech company plans to launch the ‘UPI International’ service on its app soon.

UPI transaction volume slipped 0.24% to INR 14.07 Lakh Cr in April 2023 from INR 14.10 Cr in March.

According to NPCI data, PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm secured a 94% market share in the number of UPI transactions processed in March 2023. Paytm processed 128.84 Cr transactions worth INR 1.54 Lakh Cr during the month.