SUMMARY
NIPL aims at helping other countries in creating their own agenda and developing interoperability
The plan targets the transactions made by the 30 Mn Indians staying abroad, who remit close to $100 Mn to India
Nepal is the first country to have enabled UPI transactions, to promote digital payments
NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) CEO Ritesh Shukla said that UPI is processing 40% of the global real time payments.
Addressing the Matrix Global Summit in Bengaluru on Wednesday, he said that helping other countries in creating their own agenda, developing interoperability, supporting merchant payments while Indians taking international trips, and offering them better experiences are what the NPCI is working on.
The Economic Times quoted him saying, “We are looking at those markets where there is desire to create something similar to UPI.” He further said, “It is gaining momentum given the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The cards given to Russians are not working outside the country. The people who are travelling to Russia for business interests or other reasons are unable to transact digitally in that market.”
According to Shukla, there is a lot of interest in several other countries to create such platforms using technology within their control and regulation, in which the data would be processed locally. In addition, the other aspect of the global outreach of UPI is developing interoperability.
The platform seeks to reach the 30 Mn Indians staying abroad. Their remit to India is close to $100 Mn. Citing a World Bank report, he said that globally, the cost of cross border remittances is 6%.
NIPL is focussing on easing out the current process with more transparency, better speed and efficiency.
The cross border linkage between the UPI and Singapore’s PayNow was announced in February this year, by the prime ministers of the two countries. The service was launched through token transactions by the Reserve Bank of India’s Governor Shaktikanta Das and the MD of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Ravi Menon.
The RBI, in a statement noted that through the UPI-PayNow linkage, Indian and Singaporean users will be able to make cross-border payments using their respective mobile apps.
Though the UPI transaction volume marginally dropped by 0.24% to INR 14.07 Lakh Cr in April 2023 from INR 14.10 Cr in March, the government has been trying to push it to the global ecosystem.
Last year, the NIPL partnered with Gateway Payments Service (GPS) and Manam Infotech, to initiate UPI transactions in Nepal. UPI has been adopted by eight countries including Nepal, Singapore, UAE, UK, France among others till now.
Further, per NPCI data, PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm together processed 862.54 Cr UPI transactions worth INR 13.39 Lakh Cr in April 2023.
