The National Payments Corporation of India, the umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India, has received interest from various countries looking to develop their own digital payments infrastructure in line with India’s homegrown Unified Payments Interface.

“We have received intent from various countries. We are in the process of working out the details. It might take another 12 months to sign up. The objective is whether we can look at a million dollar implementation in a smaller country,” said Dilip Asbe, MD and CEO, NPCI, on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Calcutta on Monday.

Asbe said UPI can reach a milestone of a billion transactions a day in the next 2-3 years from a peak of around 280 million at present.

Smaller countries where the cost of development and implementation of a digital payments platform is a concern can be supported by the NPCI.

There are plans to take the UPI platform to multiple countries and different use cases, including supporting countries to set up their own systems.

Cross border remittance, traveller’s payment acceptance are also under consideration.

In October last year, Worldline, a global leader in payments services, had joined forces with NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL), the international arm of NPCI, to expand the acceptance of the Indian payment means across Europe.

Singapore interest

A senior official of the Monetary Authority of Singapore on the sidelines of the G20 meeting indicated that the integration of UPI and an equivalent network in Singapore called PayNow is expected to start soon and the partnership has the potential to bring down remittance cost by 10 per cent.

Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said the interoperability of the two digital payments networks can aid a multifold growth in remittances.

Officials present at the G20 meeting said Dubai is another country where opportunities are being explored by the NPCI.

In 2021, UPI recorded 38.74 billion transactions worth $954 billion, making it the leading real-time payment ecosystem in the world. Between April and November 2022, the volume of transactions on NPCI was 55.3 billion.

Tea exports look good

Indian tea industry’s export prospect is bright, especially to the G20 nations, amid the uncertainties arising out of the non-placement of fresh contracts from Iran, and doubts over the quality and quantity of the crisis-hit Sri Lankan crop, stakeholders said on Monday.

India exported 134.14 million kg of tea in the April-October period of 2022-23, with a major chunk of the shipments going to traditional buyers among the G20 bloc.

Shipments to our traditional importers in the 20-nation bloc have picked up, Tea Board India chairman Saurav Pahari said.

PTI