Paytm Eyes Growth Beyond India, To Soon Launch UPI International

At a time when the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is pushing for acceptance of United Payments Interface (UPI) services in foreign countries, Paytm plans to launch the ‘UPI International’ service on its app soon.

Speaking during the company’s live session on social media, Bhavesh Gupta, board member of Paytm Payments Bank, said that the fintech giant would soon launch UPI International.

Gupta said that while the NPCI has begun merchant acquisition for UPI in Singapore, he expects it to also start soon in countries which have a big Indian diaspora or see a large number of Indian tourists.

“Very soon, we will also launch this service on the Paytm app. But we believe that it is still a bit early for this service to be prioritsed over some other features which consumers want,” he added.

It must be noted that Paytm’s rival PhonePe integrated UPI International with its app earlier this year, under which users can make payments in foreign currencies directly from their bank accounts.

During the session on Tuesday, Paytm also launched UPI Lite and RuPay credit card service on UPI for iOS. It also launched various other features, including allowing users to have an alternate UPI ID to hide mobile numbers.

Meanwhile, Paytm Payments Bank CEO Surinder Chawla said that Paytm has gained 6 Mn customers within three months of the launch of UPI Lite on the app in February.

Recently, PhonePe also launched UPI Lite feature to allow users to make low-value payments under INR 200 from their UPI Lite account without entering a pin. 

NPCI’s Expansion Push For UPI

Paytm’s statement on UPI International comes at a time when the NPCI has taken many measures for international expansion of UPI. Earlier this year, it allowed non-resident account types such as non-resident external (NRE) and non-resident ordinary (NRO) accounts with international mobile numbers to use UPI.

The NPCI has established a subsidiary, NPCI International, to undertake and coordinate with international players. The government is in talks with as many as 30 countries from across the world  for potentially deploying the payments framework in their countries, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said earlier.

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 to cater to the massive Indian diaspora living and working there. 

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

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 terms of the number of UPI transactions processed in March 2023. Paytm processed 128.84 Cr transactions worth INR 1.54 Lakh Cr during the month. 

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