Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week during his visit to France said that India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) will be used in the European country. This implies that soon Indian tourists would be able to make rupee payments using UPI from atop the Eiffel Tower.
The development comes months after UPI and Singapore’s PayNow, earlier this year, were linked to allow users in either country to make cross-border transactions. However, these are not the only countries accepting UPI payments. Here's a list of nations that have adopted the system:
Bhutan
Bhutan was the first country to adopt UPI in 2021. NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) and Royal Monetary Authority (RMA) of Bhutan partnered for this purpose, allowing Indian tourists to be able to make UPI-based payments. Bhutan also was the second nation after Singapore to have BHIM-UPI acceptance at merchant locations.
Oman
Oman joined this list in October 2022 by partnering with NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) to accept UPI payments. The NPCI and the Central Bank of Oman signed an agreement for the purpose, enabling hassle-free digital payments, benefiting lakhs of Indians working in the country.
UAE
NIPL in April 2022 announced that BHIM-UPI was launched at NEOPay terminals across UAE, allowing Indian tourists to make easy payments using the system.
Southeast Asia
NIPL also signed an agreement with cross-border digital payments provider Liquid Group to allow QR-based UPI payments in 10 Asian countries that include Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
UK
Last year in August, India and the UK collaborated to provide QR code-based transactions in the UK. For this, the NIPL has partnered with PayXpert, a payments solutions provider.
"This collaboration will make the Indian payment solutions available in the U.K. on all PayXpert's android point-of-sale (POS) devices for in-store payments, starting with UPI-based QR code payments and later integrating the possibility for RuPay card payments," NPCI had said in a release.
Nepal
In February 2022, Nepal adopted UPI through Gateway Payment Services, Manam Infotech. Nepal became the first country to deploy UPI as a payment platform outside India. The idea was to deploy UPI to boost interoperable real-time person-to-person (P2P) and to-merchant (P2M) transactions.
