While the world leaders have converged to New Delhi for the G20 Summit for multilateral talks relating to economy, peace and global cooperation – some of them have also experienced the ease and convenience with which they can send money digitally via Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
To showcase how the UPI works, a number of foreign dignitaries were given hands-on experience of this digital payments system.
One government official told ANI that these delegates will be given ₹500-1000 in their UPI wallets for carrying out UPI transactions.
India has launched the G20 India mobile app for the global summit. This app also provides UPI access to delegate during the summit.
UPI technology is undoubtedly a success story for India’s tech industry and recently Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani recently referred to the NPCI (which developed UPI) as the crown jewel of India.
At G20, those who experienced a live demonstration of UPI were Janet Yellen, US secretary of the Treasury, and Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh.
One G20 delegate from Brazil visited Crafts Bazaar, shopped from the Tamil Nadu stall and paid via QR code.
Another delegate Said Abass Ahamed from the African Union also experienced payments with UPI. Nigeria’s chief security officer Emanuel also used UPI at the summit.
UPI in overseas
Earlier this year, India’s UPI and Singapore’s PayNow were linked to allow users in either country to make cross-border transactions. The UPI is being expanded to NRIs in 10 countries including Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Oman.
During his two-day visit to France, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that Indians will be able to use UPI from Eiffel Tower.
Through credit lines
Recently, UPI transactions hit a new milestone of 10 billion plus. It is also worth pointing out that the Reserve Bank of India expanded the scope of UPI by enabling transfer from credit lines at banks.
As of now, savings accounts, overdraft accounts, prepaid wallets and credit cards can be linked to this payment platform. Now, payments through a pre-sanctioned credit line issued by a scheduled commercial bank to individuals with prior consent of the individual customer are enabled for transactions using the UPI system.
