The UPI payments in Nepal, which are operated on a cross-border basis, crossed the whopping value of a lakh today. The UPI system is a predominant system of digital payments that is already widely functional and in use in multiple countries and has now reached a new milestone in India’s neighbor too.
The Journey of UPI
UPI was launched 6 months back in the Nepalese economy and just within these 6 months, on 11th August, the person-to-merchant transactions (P2M) have already crossed the one lakh mark in the economy. This was a joint initiative between NIPL and the Nepalese Payments Network, which is called Fonepay.
India-Nepal Collaboration
The NIPL stands for NPCI Payments Limited, and it is the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India which is abbreviated for the NPCI. Under this UPI scheme between the two countries, the Indians in Nepal can make use of UPI to pay the merchants who are in Nepal. The Nepalese merchants can receive these aforementioned payments from their Indian clients or customers with ease.
What Is In It For The Two Countries?
This is expected to drive growth in both the countries as the major visitors that Nepal gets, includes a huge percentage of Indians. This is expected to help drive Nepal’s tourism sector and its economic growth as payments from UPI have already registered a 45% annual growth according to the NPCI. And this is expected to prosper more.
UPI One World
The Nepali citizens can also make use of the UPI service called ‘UPI One World’. They can use UPI to make payments at any shop or store that accepts UPI based payments and they will not be charged any kind of extra amount for availing this facility. This will benefit the citizens too.
The UPI based system is already in use in several countries including Singapore, Bhutan, France and others. Just one day back, UPI also saw its start in the tourist rich island country of the Maldives.
How it will add to the economy of India and then also to the economy of Nepal remains to be seen.
