India very ambitious about UPI, wants to internationalise it, sources say

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Government of India are "very ambitious" in their pursuit of making the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and other digital payment solutions available "everywhere" in India.

Our goal is to have a presence in every major market. To begin, we are obviously in discussion with the countries that have expressed interest. Our long-term aim, while reasonable, is nonetheless lofty. A participant in the September 5 meetings noted, "We want to be there in every country, be it UPI or other payments and digital products.

The work to expand UPI's reach abroad continues. Discussions are on with other countries after agreements have been struck with them. We hope to expand UPI's use over the world. We also hope to connect the UPI to the swift monetary systems of other nations. That's another method to make the UPI international, the individual said.

The G20 Leaders' Summit will take place on September 9-10 in New Delhi, and India will use its Presidency to highlight its achievements and competence in the digital payments field. The statements come only days before the summit. India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish a framework for using their respective local currencies to settle bilateral transactions and link their fast payment systems ahead of the third meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in Gandhinagar in July.

Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to France, where he announced that Indian tourists will be able to make rupee payments using UPI from atop the Eiffel Tower, the MoU to link the UPI with the UAE's Instant Payment Platform (IPP) was announced. In February of this year, India and Singapore signed an agreement to integrate the UPI with Singapore's real-time payment system, PayNow.

Many nations are showing keen interest in UPI and RuPay cards. They're talking to these countries and in various phases of negotiation. The countries most interested are not always those closest to the United States. Countries across Latin America and Africa have expressed an interest in our services. The source further said that "local high commissions and embassies have been in discussions with both NPCI and RBI."

Leaders' Summit preparations

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will host an exhibition pavilion at the Leaders' Summit later this week, just as it did at previous G20 meetings held around the country over the past year, to highlight the country's progress in five key areas: the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), digital payments initiatives like UPI One World and RuPay On-the-Go, the new public tech platform for frictionless credit, and the Bharat Bill Payment System for cross-border bill payments.

In December of 2022, India initiated a pilot program with four cities and four banks to test out the viability of CBDC in the retail sector. Almost 2 million customers and businesses are now part of this network, which has grown to encompass 13 banks and 26 locations. The Reserve Bank of India plans to reach its goal of one million daily retail CBDC transactions by the end of the year.

August saw a modest decline from July's 20,000-25,000 retail CBDC transactions due to banks' attempts to make the retail CBDC and UPI infrastructure compatible.

Future pilots will test new use cases and technological design in light of this data. According to our sources, "we are also thinking about adding features like offline usage to provide resilience and availability in the absence of network, and programmability, i.e., tying the use of funds to specific use cases."

A reliable source claims that the RBI is preparing to launch the wholesale version of the CBDC on the international telephone call market.

The wholesale CBDC pilot project's goal has always been to test out new innovations in the field. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity to highlight how much simpler it is to conduct trials of new technologies on a large scale during pilot programs.

Also read :- RBI allows pre-sanctioned credit lines through UPI

India also hopes that the RuPay card would become as ubiquitous in international financial transactions as Visa and Mastercard.

There are just a few of major players in the card payments industry worldwide. We're working to have RuPay recognized as a viable option. To that end, we're investigating whether or not RuPay cards can perform all the same types of transactions as other cards can. As with the UPI, "our effort will be to keep adding new facilities and encourage other countries to use RuPay cards," the source said, adding that RuPay would have to be made attractive "on the basis of merit and features, not regulatory dispensation."