Nepal will become the first foreign country to adopt India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which is likely to play a major role in transforming the digital economy of the Himalayan country, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said on Friday.
NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), the international arm of NPCI,
has joined hands with Gateway Payments Service (GPS) and Manam Infotech to provide the services in Nepal. GPS is the authorised payment system operator in Nepal and Manam Infotech will deploy Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in that country.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said in a statement, “Nepal shall be the first country outside of India to adopt UPI as the payments platform driving the digitalization of cash transactions and furthering the vision and objectives of the Nepal Government and Nepal Rastra Bank, country central bank. The collaboration will serve the larger digital public good in Nepal and bolster interoperable real-time person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions in the neighbouring country. This collaboration will enable the last-mile consumers in Nepal to reap the benefits of an open interoperable payments system driving immediate payment transfers between bank accounts and merchant payments in real-time.”
Rajesh Prasad Manandhar, CEO of Gateway Payments Service (GPS), said: “It will also enable the way forward for real-time cross-border P2P remittances between Nepal and India. UPI service has created a significant positive impact in India in terms of the country’s digital payment transformation. We expect UPI in Nepal would also play a pivotal role in transforming the digital economy of the country and dreams of building a less-cash society.”
In 2021, UPI enabled 3,900 crore financial transactions valuing USD 940 billion, which is equivalent to approximately 31% of India’s GDP.