Non-resident Indians (NRIs) will soon be able to make payments in Unified Payments Interface (UPI) without having to get an Indian mobile number.
The National Payments Corporation of India said non-resident accountholders (NRE/NRO accounts) from select countries can access UPI using their international mobile numbers. To begin with, NRIs in 10 countries will get UPI access.
NPCI intends to extend this to more countries in the near future, said a CNBC TV-18 report on Wednesday.
NPCI asks UPI ecosystem members, including banks and payment players, to ensure such accounts are FEMA compliant, with anti-money laundering and other such checks in place. They have to ensure compliance by April 30, 2023.
To start with, the NPCI will enable transactions from mobile numbers having country codes of Singapore, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, USA, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom, along with the current domestic country code, as per an NPCI circular released on January 10, 2023.
Menwhile, the Cabinet on Wednesday approved a Rs 2,600-crore scheme for promoting RuPay debit cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions.
Under the scheme, banks will be provided financial incentives for promoting Point of Sale (PoS) and e-commerce transactions using RuPay and UPI in the current financial year.
The decision in this regard was taken in the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
”India’s strides in digital payments will be further strengthened by today’s Cabinet decision regarding promotion of RuPay Debit Cards and BHIM-UPI transactions,” Modi said in a tweet.
The scheme would help in building a robust digital payment ecosystem. It would also promote UPI Lite and UPI123PAY as economical and user-friendly digital payments.
In December alone, UPI achieved a record of 782.9 crore digital payment transactions with a value of Rs 12.82 lakh crore.
”The approved incentive scheme for promotion of RuPay Debit Cards and low-value BHIM-UPI transactions (P2M) in FY 2022-23 has a financial outlay of Rs 2,600 crore,” an official statement said.
In 2021-22, the government approved an incentive scheme in compliance with the budget announcement of 2021-22 to give a boost to digital transactions. In the 2022-23 Budget, the government announced its intent to continue the financial support.
The total digital payments transactions have registered a year-on-year growth of 59 per cent, rising from 5,554 crore in 2020-21 to 8,840 crore in FY2021-22. BHIM-UPI transactions have registered a year-on-year growth of 106 per cent, rising from 2,233 crore in FY2020-21 to 4,597 crore in FY2021-22.