The National Payment Corporation of India’s (NPCI) international branch, NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL) has partnered with Mashreq Bank, a digital banking solutions provider based in the United Arab Emirates. The partnership aims to deliver the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in the UAE.
According to a press release, this partnership will benefit over 2 million Indians who visit the UAE every year. Further, users will be able to pay for their purchases in shops and merchant outlets across the UAE utilizing UPI-based mobile applications.
The strategic partnership between the NPCI and Mashreq will help the UAE’s digital payment ecosystem grow and expand UPI’s reach in international markets. According to Mashreq, the rising willingness among customers and businesses to use mobile-based payment methods will help to nurture the ecosystem. Moreover, the bank claims to have witnessed 20% month-on-month growth in pick-up rate as young and tech-savvy customers seek to use the mobile payment systems along with a growing number of retailers across the UAE that accept such transactions.
UPI and NPCI
UPI is a real-time payment (RTP) system that allows person to person (P2P) and person to merchant (P2M) transactions. Due to covid, UPI transactions in India have witnessed humongous growth. This year, NPCI processed 3.24 billion transactions, up 15.7 percent month over month.
In April 2020, NPCI launched its international arm NIPL to deploy UPI – and card scheme – RuPay – outside of India.
In July 2021, NIPL announced a partnership with Bhutan’s Royal Monetary Authority (RMA) to implement UPI-based payments in the region. With this, Bhutan became the first foreign country to do so. The partnership is expected to assist the approximately 200,000 Indian visitors who visit Bhutan each year.
You can read the press release here.
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