Nepal to become first foreign country to adopt India’s UPI solution

Nepal will be the first foreign country outside of India to deploy Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as the payments platform to push the digitalization of cash transactions in the country.

National Payments Corporation of India’s NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), Gateway Payments Service (GPS), authorized Payment System Operators in Nepal, and Bengaluru-based Manam Infotech have collaborated to deploy UPI in Nepal over the next few months.

The UPI deployment will allow the last-mile customers in Nepal to enjoy the benefits of open interoperable real-time person to person (P2P) and person to merchant (P2M) transactions.

Rajesh Prasad Manandhar — CEO of Gateway Payments Service said: “The same 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 play a pivotal role in transforming the digital economy of the country and dreams of building a less-cash society.”

The collaboration is also said to enable real-time cross-border P2P remittances between Nepal and India.

Naga Babu Ramineni — Director of Manam Infotech said: “Manam has always been part of major digital transformation across the various regions of the world, we believe this partnership will eliminate all the barriers of payment transformation within Nepal and across the border thereby transforming the regional economy.”

Earlier, NIPL had entered into agreements with Bhutan and Singapore for enabling UPI QR-based payments.

The agreement with Singapore-based payment system PayNow also enables cross-border remittances.

NIPL had also partnered with Dubai-headquartered Mashreq Bank to allow Indian travelers to pay for their purchases using UPI-based applications.

The Nepal partnership, on the other hand, will have their own UPI, own apps, with their own banks like India, allowing the creation of UPI real-time-based payment system in the country.

UPI, India’s mobile-based payment system, is said to have registered 39 billion financial transactions worth $940 billion in 2021.