UPI International Money Transfer : Revolutionizing Remittances

Unified Payment Interface or UPI, is a quick and seamless way to transfer money digitally in India. The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), jointly founded by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Indian Banks Association in 2016. Within seven years of its inception, UPI has revolutionized the country’s digital payment landscape and has also gained global traction. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on February 8, 2023, announced the UPI services extended to travellers coming from G20 countries to India. RBI governor Shaktikanta Das announced “UPI has become hugely popular in Retail Digital Payments” in India. It is now proposed to permit all inbound travellers to India to use UPI for their merchant payment(P2M) while they are in India”

From street vegetable vendors to our grandparents, UPI has been widely adopted across the country due to its ease of use and acceptance. The triumph of UPI is astounding for a diverse and complex geographic area like India, since it made digital payments accessible to both tech savvy and non-tech savvy users. From YoY in February 2023, the peer-to-merchant (P2M) UPI transactions saw 119% growth, as of latest data displayed by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). To give a perception, in December 2022, the UPI transactions touched a record high of Rs.12.82 lakh crores.

What is UPI International Money Transfer?

According to a World Bank Report, since 2008, India has been the world’s largest recipient of remittances. UPI offers instant international remittance to over 32 million Indian diasporas. In collaboration with Western Union, NCPI is advancing UPI international money transfers to India. If you are overseas and wish to send money to friends or family in India, you can now do so by using your recipient’s UPI ID.

How to Receive Money Using UPI from Overseas

The NCPI has associated with Western Union to permit real-time money transfers in India. The payment is instant and you can send or receive money at any time of the day. If you are staying overseas and willing to transfer money to India, here’s how to do that. UPI has allowed 2 different platforms to send money from overseas to India – Wise & Western Union.

Wise

Here are the steps to send money using UPI with Wise

Sign in to your Wise account online
Select Send
Enter the amount to be sent
Select the currency as INR for your recipient
Click on Add a New Recipient
Select UPI
Enter the recipient’s UPI ID and address
Confirm the details
Select Send
And that’s how it’s done. The transfer will be notified to you, and the time it will take will be displayed.

Western Union

All you need is the recipient’s UPI ID and you can now easily send money to India via Western Union Money Transfer services online.

Sign Up to your Western Union account
Choose India as the Receiver’s country From the list
Enter the amount to send to India
Choose UPI when asked, “how does the receiver want the money?”
Next, fill in the receiver’s UPI ID
Pay via bank transfer to start the UPI money transfer
Upon using a debit or credit card for the money transfer, there may be exchange-fee and transfer-fee applicable.

UPI International Transfer Fees
While transferring money overseas through UPI, there are 2 main fees to be taken into consideration. Firstly, Transfer Fee & the second Exchange Rate Fee.

Transfer Fee – Transfer Fee is the tariff applied on doing the transaction. It differs depending on the amount & the country transferred to. The transfer fee also depends on the medium used to transfer. In case, Credit card is used for the transfer, the transfer fee cost will be higher. While a wire transfer or a bank account transfer can keep the fee minimum.

Exchange Rate Fee – In cases where the exchange rate you get on the website is weaker than the real exchange rate you see on Google, you know the service is taking a cut of every dollar or pound you exchange.

PhonePe : India’s First Cross-Border UPI Payments Platform

Founded in December 2015, catering to both merchants & consumers with over 440 million registered users across the subcontinent, Walmart-backed PhonePe, India’s first digital payment & Fintech company has launched support for cross-border international UPI payments. The users can now utilize their Indian bank accounts to make the payments at merchant outlets in the UAE, Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan.

According to a report by Bain & company, Indian Fintech company, PhonePe is expected to be worth $350 billion in valuation by 2026, aiming to compete with Google Pay, Paytm & Amazon Pay.

Traveller from G20 countries can use UPI in India

Foreign nationals and non-resident Indians with international mobile numbers linked to their NRE/NRO accounts can now access UPI-enabled digital payments in India through the issuance of rupee-denominated prepaid payment instruments (PPIs) by authorized banks and non-banks. These PPIs, which can also be issued in collaboration with entities authorized to deal in foreign exchange, can be used for merchant payments (P2M) only and must be loaded or reloaded against a receipt of foreign exchange. Initially, this facility will be extended to G-20 country travellers arriving at select international airports (Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi) and later expanded to all entry points in the country, as per the Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines. The UPI services are available to Non Resident Indians (NRIs) in 10 countries without requiring them to have an India phone number. The countries are Singapore, US, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and UK.

The Game Changer

In a move that could change the game for NRIs, NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) has released a notification that allows NRIs to link their international mobile numbers with UPI for payments and fund transfers. This move will provide greater convenience to travellers and promote digital payments in the country.

Regarding the latest announcement by NCPI on UPI for NRI’s in G20 countries Mayank Goyal, CEO & CFA, moneyHOP shared “UPI for G20 countries is basically with an intention to make the transactions of lots of foreign tourists cashless and digital. The way it is being done is the primary documents that will be essential for the activation of the UPI wallet will be VISA and their passport. The bodies that will be facilitating such transactions are AD2 players whereby they have been asked to set up their own kiosk and booths at the airports and vis-a-vis the document collection and passport. The foreign tourist can download an app, wherein they can give the physical cash to the authorised dealer counter at the airport. This amount can be cash or via card and the agent in the counter will activate the wallet of the UPI collection of the foreign tourist and top it up with a store value equivalent to foreign currency that’s been given and beyond that the UPI apps will work normally be it for auto driver payments or local merchants that tourists might indulge in. All of the payments will be done using UPI. This is a great initiative and essentially is a creating an element of prominence in the international payment community for a non-profit quasi government entity like NPCI by creating the world’s fastest-growing and the most adopted real-time payment system of the world”