India's UPI International payment system is now playing a crucial role in humanitarian efforts, enabling seamless disaster relief donations from Indian users to Nepal's Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund, showcasing its growing global acceptance and utility beyond tourism.
Key Points
- UPI International, initially for Indian tourists, is now facilitating disaster relief donations to Nepal's Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund.
- The embassy of Nepal in India is actively encouraging Indian users to utilise their UPI apps for these contributions.
- This marks a significant shift, expanding UPI's cross-border use case beyond tourism to include inbound collection for foreign governments.
- The move positions UPI International alongside global payment giants like Alipay+ and UnionPay for international aid.
- Donors need to activate the UPI International feature on their apps to transact, with amounts converted from INR to NPR.
A digital payments rail designed to help Indian tourists buy lunch in Kathmandu is now carrying disaster relief money into Nepal.
The embassy of Nepal in India has encouraged Indian users donating to the country’s Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund to activate the international payments feature on their UPI apps, marking what is likely the first use of UPI International for a foreign government’s relief appeal.
It also marks a shift in how UPI International is being used. Until now, the network’s cross-border use case has largely been built around Indians travelling overseas and paying local merchants.
The Nepal relief appeal opens it up to users who may never leave India.
India’s UPI International stands alongside Chinese payment methods such as Alipay+ and UnionPay to facilitate cross-border donations to the disaster-hit country.
Even as cross-border acceptance grows for use cases beyond tourism and convenience, an industry source said that it was also necessary to keep a tab on potential frauds.
Expanding UPI's Global Reach
Donors are required to switch on UPI International feature on their digital payments apps to transact using authorised online payment gateway listed by the Government of Nepal.
Once activated for a particular country, Indian users can transact in the domicile for a week.
Users see the amount converted from Indian rupees to Nepalese rupees as they punch it in.
“Friends and well-wishers in India who are encountering difficulty while contributing to the Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund of the Government of Nepal by scanning the designated QR codes are kindly requested to activate ‘UPI International’ in their UPI/banking application before proceeding with the payment,” Nepal embassy, India, said in a post on social media platform X.
The call for donations comes amid devastating flash floods in Nepal. The floods were triggered last week near the Nepal-Tibet border. An email sent to NPCI remained unanswered till press time.
How To Donate Via UPI International
“For UPI International under NIPL (NPCI International Payments Limited) to be placed alongside established rails like Alipay and UnionPay shows that scale and trust are starting to translate into global acceptance, not just domestic dominance.
"What stands out is that a foreign entity is choosing to collect through UPI rather than traditional banking channels, a use case we expect to grow as global organisations recognise that offering UPI as a collection option makes them easier to pay into,” said Ashwin Bhatnagar, CEO and cofounder of Xflow, a cross-border fintech in India.
UPI International is an initiative to globalise India’s real-time payments system by NIPL. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) operates the UPI network.
In March 2024, NIPL and Nepal's largest payment network Fonepay Payment Service went live with cross-border UPI payments between the two countries.
The first phase covered QR code-based person-to-merchant transactions -- an Indian visitor in the Himalayan country could scan a Fonepay QR code and pay from an Indian bank account in rupees, with the Nepali merchant credited in Nepalese rupees.
Expert Views On UPI's Evolving Role
“This is a meaningful marker for UPI’s journey outside India. UPI International has largely been seen as a convenience for outbound tourists and non-resident Indians.
"The Nepal embassy listing it alongside Alipay and UnionPay for Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund donations is different; it’s UPI being recognised as a legitimate inbound collection rail by a foreign government,” added Bhatnagar.
Other payment methods accepted on the Government of Nepal Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund include debit and credit cards on Visa and Mastercard for international users.
UPI is accepted in other countries such as France, Qatar, the UAE, Bhutan, Cambodia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Mauritius, with deployments underway in other regions.
