Soon Nepal will become the first country outside India to deploy India’s UPI payment system. NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), the international arm of NPCI has partnered with Gateway Payments Service (GPS), an authorized payment system operator in Nepal, and Manam Infotech to bring UPI to Nepal. Over the next 3 months, these three companies will work together to deploy UPI in Nepal with all the features UPI offers in India.
UPI will enable a quick person-to-person payments in Nepal and will help catalyze the process of financial inclusion in Nepal. It will also enable real-time cross-border P2P payments between Nepal and India.
“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,” Rajesh Prasad Manandhar, CEO of GPS said.
UPI is one of the most successful real-time payments systems globally. It is growing really fast in India. In 2021, it processed 3,900 crore financial transactions valuing USD 940 billion.
I am now confused why the press release claims Nepal to be the first foreign country to deploy UPI. NIPL and Bhutan’s RMA have already launched UPI in Bhutan last year.
NIPL is working to collaborate with more overseas partners to deploy UPI in other countries. NPCI has already signed MOU with Network International to deploy UPIin Middle East and Africa. Although the aim was to start rolling out UPI in the first quarter of 2022, we are still waiting to hear about the development. NPCI also partnered with Liquid Group in 2021 to enable QR-based UPI payments’ acceptance in 10 countries across North and Southeast Asia.
