Sending money back home or making merchant payments has now become hassle-free for a whole lot of I ndians living abroad.
India’s National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has extended access to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) to non-resident Indians, a press release said yesterday (Jan. 10). The homegrown digital payments facility will be available to accounts using international mobile phone numbers from 10 select countries.
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“We have been receiving requirement from the (UPI) ecosystem with regards to the non-resident accounts and other permissible accounts having international numbers to be allowed to transact in UPI,” the NPCI statement said .
“And there has been customer demand in the ecosystem to enable UPI…and experience the seamless and instant journey of UPI. ”
All 382 member banks of NPCI have now been asked to ensure that all non-resident account types are onboarded by April 30, the press statement said.
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At 32 million (pdf), Indians living abroad comprise the world’s largest overseas diaspora. Remittances made by this section amounted to around $100 billion in 2022, up 12% from the previous year, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said yesterday.
The UPI system, launched in 2016, gained massive popularity in India during the covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, up to 74 billion transactions amounting to $1.53 trillion were recorded on NPCI .
Countries like Nepal, Bhutan, and Singapore, too, have signed deals with NPCI to integrate their payment networks with UPI, enabling seamless cross-border payments.
Indians living in the US, UK, and Gulf can now use UPI
