UPI to enter North America, other Middle-Eastern countries soon: NIPL CEO Ritesh Shukla

The global partnerships for UPI adoption have come through the NIPL.

After a successful launch in Singapore and France, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is likely to enter the North America market and other Middle-eastern countries in the coming months, said Ritesh Shukla, chief executive officer (CEO) of the National Payments Council of India’s international arm, NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL).

“In terms of more interoperability partnerships like what we did in France and Singapore, we will focus on countries which are of importance to Indians when they travel abroad or where we have significantly large Indian diaspora residing like the Middle East and North America and these are the target market for us in the coming days,” Shukla said in an exclusive interaction with Moneycontrol.

However, Shukla did not share a definite timeline for the launch in the countries mentioned.

Bespoke strategies

The global partnerships for UPI adoption have come through the NIPL. NIPL was incorporated in April 2020 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), devoted to the deployment of RuPay and UPI outside of India.

“UPI is a platform that is enabling Indian consumers with various bank accounts being able to pay for their merchant and personal payments. The utilisation or destination was confined to India and now it is changing as UPI is going global."

By infrastructure build, Shukla explained that the NIPL is helping various countries create an infrastructure similar to UPI by making their own sovereign payment platform. Interoperability build is connecting the ecosystem in India to other ecosystems in various countries to help Indians traveling abroad,” he said.

UPI's global aspirations took a big leap forward after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 14, during his visit to Paris, said Indian tourists will be able to make rupee payments using UPI from atop the Eiffel Tower.

Similarly, on February 21, India launched the linkage of cross-border connectivity with PayNow of Singapore.

India’s UPI system is steadily becoming attractive globally. The facility is seeing international extension to inbound foreign travelers from G20 countries for making merchant payments and non-resident Indians (NRIs) in selected international countries.

Going global

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on February 13 said that India has signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with 13 countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, South Korea, and Japan that want to adopt the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) for digital payments.

Nepal became the first foreign country to deploy UPI as a payment platform. With the collaboration between Nepal's Manam Infotech and Gateway Payments Service, person-to-person (P2P), person-to-merchant (P2M), and cross-border payments have been made operational.

UPI has developed a lot of interest and NIPL is working on more collaborations, Shukla said. “UPI going global means that we are adding another dimension…We are creating acceptance for various UPI-powered apps in other markets…Singapore launch received a lot of excitement and we are approaching and getting approached by newer markets to develop something similar, "He said.

While the UPI platform going global will accelerate cross-border transactions in a faster and easier way, experts also say that the adoption of UPI globally will further accelerate the growth of transaction volumes.

In fact, daily transactions on the platform can touch one billion in the next three years as UPI hits its full potential, said Dilip Asbe, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) in March at the India Fintech Conclave event of Moneycontrol.

“UPI is a platform that is enabling Indian consumers with various bank accounts being able to pay for their merchant and personal payments. The utilisation or destination was confined to India and now it is changing as UPI is going global," Shukla said.

As of June 2023, UPI transaction volume was clocked at 9.33 million and the total value of UPI transactions for June touched Rs 14.75 lakh crore.